Style

New School

New School emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as tattooing collided with graffiti art, cartoons, and pop culture. The style is defined by exaggerated, cartoony proportions, perspective distortion, and color palettes borrowed from animation — neons, pastels, and gradients that classic tattooing avoided. Subjects skew irreverent: video game characters, cartoon villains, pop culture icons, and original characters rendered with a graffiti sensibility. New School artists working at the highest level blend technical tattoo mastery with illustration and graffiti influences into something uniquely their own.