Abstract
What is Abstract?
FAQ
Abstract
Abstract
Abstract
What is Abstract?
FAQ
Abstract
Abstract tattooing represents nothing: shapes, marks and a visible gesture, composed for a body in motion.
Abstract tattooing carries onto skin what 20th-century painting opened up: shapes that represent nothing, a gesture left visible, marks, free lines, sometimes layered textures or suggested impasto. There's no subject to recognize and no symbol to decode — the subject is the composition itself, and the way it occupies a body in motion. It's worked in black and in color alike, and it borrows readily from collage, calligraphic gesture or dripping. It's a style built on trust: you don't pick an image, you pick a hand, and you let it compose for you. It suits cover-ups and scarred areas particularly well, because it has no shape to respect — the composition is built around whatever is already there.
On YokoFolio, pick the style Abstract and then your city, and widen the radius if you need to. Here the rule for choosing is different from every other style: you're not picking a drawing, you're picking a hand. Look at the portfolio as a whole and ask yourself whether you like all of it, because you'll be handing that person the composition. Check too that there are real masses and real contrast — that's what will hold over time.
Intentions rather than designs: a trail of smoke, a flow crossing an arm, a phoenix taking off reduced to a few strokes, an ink mark, free lines following a shoulder. Bring your artist a feeling, a palette, an area of the body and work of theirs that speaks to you, rather than a reference image. Plenty of them compose directly on the skin with a marker: accept that bit of the unknown, it's what the style asks for.
Geometric abstract composes with regular figures and patterns rather than with gestures. Blackwork abstract works in decisive black masses, very durable. Fine line abstract draws free, almost calligraphic lines across large stretches of bare skin. All three overlap, and plenty of artists move between them depending on the area: look at the images to work out which one pulls you.
On a surface that lets the gesture open out: the back, the flank, the thigh, the full arm, the shoulder blade. Take the time to look at the area in motion before you decide — a layout that looks right with the arm extended can break when the arm bends. Above all, don't box it into a small square: shrunk down, a gesture is just a mark with no intention behind it.