Dotwork tattoos. Dotwork tattoos, getting to know the dotted style of the tattoo

Dotwork is that unique case where a dot does not mean stop. On the contrary, it all starts with her! The most fantastic projects grow from a point and are embodied in something incredible. Lines and even completely filled areas help to enhance the effect and create a "frame" of the composition, and blotches of contrasting colors help to add depth. Black is always taken as the basis, and red and blue contrast with it, and in exceptional cases - purple, turquoise, yellow and other colors. The most popular forms for dotwork are a circle, a rhombus, a triangle and all kinds of abstractions consisting of these figures. Although the geometry does not limit the range of style possibilities. It is closely associated with engraving and graphics, ornamentation, new school and blackwork. No other way allows you to designate shades and midtones so beautifully, which is why “dot work” is always unique! Despite the fact that the process is laborious, the technique is ideal for volumetric drawings. Sometimes the patterns are folded into sleeves, sometimes they fill the shoulder or the entire back at once. The spectacle is unique and incredible! Finding a worthy example in modern tattoo catalogs is not difficult.

Dotwork tattoos for men

The point style is subject to strict logic, and does not accept randomness. That is why it is good for voluminous projects: sleeves, tattoos on the calf, shoulder, back. The dots create a shape, allowing you to make perfect transitions from dark to light without rough and sharp borders. Almost everything can be depicted in this technique: from a pattern in great detail to a portrait. In men's dotwork sketches, there are images of animals, marine life. Wolves, owls, foxes and lions are embodied in luxurious drawings and adorn their owners. Check it out by visiting the Tattoo Academy gallery.

Dotwork tattoo for girls

A work consisting of dots can be either very rich or light, translucent. And this is a huge advantage for girls. For them, we are ready to create a lacy, weightless sketch for the most beautiful tattoo. Butterfly, dragonfly, exotic flower or mandala - whatever you want. Also, if desired, the project can be black and white, color, consist of two or more contrasting shades. The work doesn't have to be big or small. The dots can add up to a perfect object that suits you 100%.

In modern society, a tattoo is not considered an attribute of people who have been or are in prison. Today, people get tattoos to stand out from the crowd, to show their individuality, and not belonging to any criminal caste. There are many types of tattoos, as well as their variants. One of the unique types of implementation is a dotwork tattoo. This is a dot tattoo that forms a certain pattern.

Dotwork tattoo style: origin story

This style appeared in the 6th century BC. Even then, various tribes left dotted patterns on the human body. This became known thanks to the rock paintings made by the ancestors from Africa. They depicted people whose bodies were covered with an ornament in the form of dots.

Such drawings applied with henna also existed in ancient Egypt. There, people decorated their bodies with various ornaments. There is an opinion that a similar type of painting appeared in India. But this judgment is erroneous, since this type of body art appeared much earlier. In Asia, it began to be used only in the 12th century.

Divisionism and pointillism are considered to be the closest parent of dotwork today. These directions appeared in the 19th century. Craftsmen made round drawings from rectangular dots. Today, this style has not lost its relevance, but has reached a new level of popularity.

Dotwork Tattoo Ideas

Such tattoos, due to their peculiarity of application, require filling in vast spaces of the body, since small works are simply “lost”. Below we consider the most popular motifs that are used in do-it-yourself sketches.

Animals

Animals play an important role in this style. Basically, their image demonstrates similar features in the character of a person and the depicted beast.

A dotwork wolf tattoo means that a person has independence, and a she-wolf indicates a desire for freedom and inner strength.

Birds symbolize the desire for bright changes. Attraction to good luck and love for experiments are demonstrated by marine animals. A large predator, such as a bear or a lion, symbolizes the strong temper of the wearer.

The fox denotes the mind, cunning, as well as the cheerful disposition inherent in the wearer.

Flowers

In dotwork tattoos, the image of a lotus is often found. Basically, this flower is made in the style of geometry, realism or ornament. The main meaning of the lotus is power, divine conduct, impregnability and strength. Sakura symbolizes the transience and fragility of life.

Scull

The skull dotwork is the most popular motif among men. This element is especially popular with rock musicians, metalheads and bikers. Carriers often perceive this sketch as a talisman and protection from death. With his help, they are trying to show their courage and bravery before the upcoming trials. In youth, it means determination and the absence of fear.

patterns

Very often, dotwork tattoos are a decoration for the body and do not carry any meaning. However, in cases where the patterns are a mandala, a tattoo can tell certain information about the wearer about his character.

In the event that the lines do not have precise shapes, and the colors used are predominantly light in color, the tattoo symbolizes the gentle nature and romantic nature of the wearer. If the drawing is red, then most likely it speaks of a person's need for love and care, as well as an explosive character.

Geometry

Geometric shapes in dotwork tattoos are used mainly as the main part of the whole pattern. Moreover, each geometric figure has its own meaning and carries a separate meaning.

The downward pointing triangle symbolizes earth and water, while the upward pointing figure represents water and fire. A divided rhombus means the strength and power inherent in man. The love of travel and the stars is symbolized by a hexagonal star. It also means a connection with the other world.

The Best Places for Dotwork Tattoos

Dotwork tattoos are stuffed in almost all parts of the body. Sometimes, when drawing large sketches, they combine blackwork and dotwork. Blackwork is drawings made in solid black. Such combinations look great on the male body. The best places for such a combination are the area on the back or chest.

A tattoo on the forearm is a great option for girls. The shoulder is usually used as a place to continue the sleeve. A sleeve is a tattoo on the arm that is stuffed from the wrist to the shoulder. The least common tattoos are on the leg.

Dotwork tattoo sketches

Despite the fact that this style was originally created for men, modern girls often use dotwork tattoos to decorate their bodies. This is because some tribes in Africa consider women to be sacred givers of life.

Most often, drawings are selected for girls, which are applied with a minimum black space. Images of different color saturation symbolize the feminine and fertility.

Mostly women apply such tattoos on their forearms and hands. A similar tattoo on the back gives the female body an eroticism.

A detailed examination of tattoos made with dots is a large number of floristry and geometric shapes, as can be seen in the photo.

Photos of finished works

Abstraction-style ornaments, skulls, birds, labyrinths, animals, girls and clocks are considered popular dotwork tattoo plots. Below in the photo are the best works of masters from around the world.

tattoo on forearm clock

Dotwork originated from the culture of tattooing the peoples of the Black Continent. The beauty of the style is mesmerizing as it allows you to create unique detailed drawings. The secret of the stereo effect lies in the dot pattern.

Distinctive features of a dotwork tattoo

Dotwork tattoos are done by applying a lot of dots. The grain size and quantity depends on the type of pattern. built on African techniques of chiseled scarring and the introduction of crushed lava ash.

The application technique implies symmetrical figures drawn with varying degrees of color depth. The density of the dye due to the dots gives a bright gradient even with a monochrome gamut.

Style features require large patterns that fill large spaces. Small jobs are lost. Allowed as the basis of a future sleeve or a large-scale project. The meaning of the tattoo is addressed to the forces of nature that fill a person's life.

Symbolism for men

Dotwork style tattoos look impressive and beautiful on a pumped-up torso. This style seems to be made for.

Large size and strong lines embody power, steadfastness, stability. Elements of the picture should not conflict with each other. Each detail fits into a single ornament, taking into account the overall symmetry.

Looking at the tattoo in more detail in this direction, you can see a large number of geometric shapes. Each part contributes its own note to the overall scale.

Symbol meaning:

triangle up - fire, air;
triangle down - water, earth;
lotus - male healthy principle;
divided rhombuses and dodecahedrons - power;
hexagonal stars - a heavenly guide, a star of good luck.

Oblique lines are usually inserted to enclose the pattern in an ensemble. They draw out perspectives, help to beautifully shape the muscles.

Symbolism for women

Dotwork style tattoo for contains a plant theme. This is a kind of reference to the primary origins of the style. For the peoples of Africa, a woman is a sacred giver of life, many tribes support matriarchy.

According to the drawing, the flowers should adorn the hand, emphasizing grace and covering the space of either the sleeve or a compact piece.

Basically clogged up. Drawings are executed with minimal black space. Oriental motifs, mandala are popular. All these symbols promise fertility and protection of the feminine essence.

Places for applying the dotwork style

Tattoo on the lower leg
Tattoo sleeve
Wrist tattoo
chest tattoo
Ankle tattoo
Half sleeve tattoo
mandala tattoo
shoulder tattoo
Tattoo on the arm
dog tattoo
side tattoo
Ankle tattoo
Tattoo on the arm
Tattoo on the arm
Tattoo on the arm
Tattoo on the arm
Tattoo sleeve

Dotwork tattoos are considered the most difficult and painstaking to perform. There are very few masters able to fill a tattoo in this style, and only a few professionals. But high-quality dotwork tattoos are real masterpieces of wearable art, radically different from the usual tattoos. They have their own characteristics and rules for applying pigment under the skin. We will introduce you to the style of dotwork tattoos, tell you about their subtleties and advantages, and show you the most beautiful dotwork tattoos.

Features of dotwork tattoos

Dotwork literally translates as “dot work”. This is the whole point of such tattoos: they are filled with dots, each dot is placed at a certain interval, and as a result, voluminous, rich and truly bewitching drawings are obtained.

Dotwork style tattoos have their own characteristics:

As a rule, black paint is used for such dot tattoos, but in principle there are no color restrictions as such.
Small tattoos are not performed in this style, as they will simply look ugly, and the drawing will not be “read”. Dotwork tattoo loves space.
Such a dot tattoo can be stuffed both with a conventional induction machine and manually.
Dot style tattoos are well readable from a distance. They do not have clear lines, and the volume is created due to the gaps in the skin between the points and the depth of pigment injection.
Dotwork tattoos are painful. Experienced people say that the pain during dotwork is much stronger than with a traditional tattoo. This is also explained by the fact that the work takes much longer, and as you know, the longer, the more painful.
Such tattoos with dots look clear for a long time, since the dot technique allows you to inject the pigment deeper under the skin.

Dotwork tattoos are a very difficult job. It's not even about the time that the master spends when creating a drawing. To get a high-quality dot tattoo, the master must have a mathematical mindset and be able to calculate symmetry perfectly. In the course of work, the points should not intersect, the rows should line up naturally. Some masters, creating sketches of tattoos in the dotwork style, draw drawings for hours with the help of a compass and rulers.

Plots dotwork tattoo

As a rule, sketches of tattoos in the dotwork style are all kinds of ornaments, geometric patterns, contour drawings, abstractions. Thanks to the storyline, dotwork tattoos do not bother their owner for a long time.

In this style, a variety of drawings up to portraits can be performed and they look amazing. However, the professionalism of the master is very important here. Girls often choose floral motifs, ethnic ornaments and religious symbols. The meaning of dotwork tattoos directly depends on the chosen sketch. The dot tattoo style is often combined with other techniques, acting as an excellent backdrop for or.

To whom do we owe the appearance of the dotwork tattoo?

Just as high heels are associated with Christian Louboutin, dotwork tattoos are associated with Xed Le Head. It is impossible to say with certainty that it was in his head that the idea of dotwork tattoo was born, because this direction has been known since ancient times, when representatives of African tribes adorned their bodies with bitmaps. But Xed Le Head definitely popularized the genre.

In the 90s, he began to fill his own body with tattoos consisting of dots. As the pioneer of the genre himself says, before his first tattoo, he did not know how to draw at all, but simply wanted to “do something” and he liked it. In Russia, dotwork masters can be counted on the fingers, but in Europe this style is more popular.

The process of creating a dotwork tattoo

A dotwork-style tattoo is created according to the following step-by-step instructions:

Having found an experienced master who has experience in creating tattoos in this genre, first of all you will have to discuss with him which image and on which part of the body you will appear.
Then the master will transfer the sketch to the skin according to the principle of transfers, having previously cleaned it and disinfected it. Some masters draw the contours of the future tattoo immediately on the skin.
When creating a traditional tattoo, work begins with padding the outline. In a dotwork tattoo, sections of the image are immediately filled with dots.
When the work is completed, the skin will be treated with an antiseptic, and a bandage will be applied on top.

Periods are not only used as a punctuation mark to mark the end of a sentence. As you can see, with their help you can create masterpieces. How do you like this dot tattoo technique? If you have tattoos made in this style on your body, share your impressions in the comments below.

Video: How dotwork tattoos are stuffed

FURFUR continues to deal with the current state of affairs in the world of tattoos. Not so long ago, we talked about Soviet prison tattoos, which have become a special fetish in the West. Today, as an alternative to the old school that has set the teeth on edge, we will talk in detail about another technique in which the emphasis is on dots - dotwork.

With the most careful execution of finishing work, each point is set separately - therefore, such work takes a long time, is expensive and requires a lot of patience from the master. There are quite a few application methods - a dotwork tattoo is done both with a classic induction machine and with hands (the so-called hand-poking).

Dotwork requires not only patience, but also skill from the tattoo artist - poorly set dots turn blue and blur. But a good finish not only looks great, but is also better preserved - due to the free skin between the points and the stability of the point itself: the points usually go deeper under the skin.

There are not so many people in the world who can do high-quality dotwork. And the real masters can be completely counted on the fingers.

Dotwork can be called both style and technique: in its purest form, dotwork is an ornament using dots. Dotwork itself as a technique can be used in any direction - even in the same old school

Wizard comment

Ivan Hack
tattoo artist
dotwork.ru

First of all, you need to be a mathematician and be able to calculate a drawing, build ornaments in vector graphics. Dotwork is just a tool

Dotwork is a tool, and then a multifaceted world of ornaments and mathematics opens up to you. To do this professionally, you need to either have a mathematical mindset or be an illustrator designer. Every day I have to build elements in vector graphics, think over the composition, calculate the perfect symmetry.

Here is one person in Kyiv who draws everything by hand, draws everything with a compass and builds according to the ruler. Unfortunately, I don't have time for this. In this regard, my mathematical education was very useful to me.

I don't dot one at a time, but fill in large areas in several passes, and that's it. It wasn't easy, I I tried to develop my own techniques so that the dots do not intersect and line up in unnatural rows, but easily and organically lie on the skin. In the future, the process went already easier, on the machine.

Unfortunately, due to the increased popularity of dotwork, many inexperienced craftsmen began to take up work in this technique. I am constantly approached by people who want to fix their low-quality tattoos. It is not always technically possible. But if a person begins to get tattooed in this style, then it is difficult to stop him.

8 top dotwork artists

It is believed that dotwork as a technique was invented by the Englishman Xed le Head - so, at least, he claims. If he is a little cunning, then, without a doubt, it was he who brought the genre its popularity: today the direction is as closely associated with his name as jeans are with Levi Strauss. In the 1990s, Xed was the first to start filling the body with repeating ornaments using only geometric shapes.

Another pioneer of the genre is the Danish tattoo artist Colin Dale, who also practices other traditional techniques with might and main - for example, stitching (“sewn through” the skin). Dale is engaged in "traditional tattooing", as Colin himself calls it - he set up a studio in the center of Copenhagen, where he invites all tattoo artists working in ethnographic styles without using a typewriter - from Borneo style to Japanese techniques. The style of Dale himself could be called neo-Ordic with a predominance of Celtic motifs - runes, pictograms, and so on.

There are many touching stories associated with it. For example, one day, he went to Sweden with one of his clients to get her face tattooed, as it was forbidden by Danish law. On another occasion, he tattooed a 103-year-old woman.

If the iconic Xad le Head and Colin Dale are closely associated with the British and Scandinavian schools, then for the Belgian center for the development of dotwork, the main name is Daniel Di Mattia. Dan works for Calypso Tattoos and belongs to the old school of tattoo artists with over 20 years of experience. Dan is considered one of the best black and dotwork tattoo artists. The largest body of work remains the body of his ex-wife Marisa, a famous tattoo blogger Needled.com and author of a series of books on the art of black and white tattooing.

At this stage, the popularity of the genre is associated with the American artist and tattoo artist Thomas Hooper. A series of documentaries about the Gypsy Gentleman tattoo begins with him. Today, Thomas is so famous that posting his tattoos in your tumblers can be bad form. Thomas actively exhibits as an artist and participates in the fashion industry - he collaborates with designers Helmut Lang and is one of those tattoo artists whose work is liked even by those who usually do not approve of tattoos.

In his large-scale works, Thomas mixes natural and geometric patterns and combines them with oriental motifs and birds. You should contact them in one of the most interesting tattoo parlors in New York - Saved Tattoo.

As a rule, all the main tattoo artists are on good terms with each other - Jondix from Spain, for example, is friends with Cooper and Xed le Head. By the way, they did more than one tattoo together - those clients were lucky.

Jondix is praised for its accuracy and detail. He started tattooing with small drawings and even in his large works he continues to show small details. A diploma in architecture gave Jondix a love for geometric forms, and a Spanish origin - a bias in mysticism. He can be called the main protagonist of the European esoteric tattoo with a pronounced interest in the East - Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and mantras appear in his works every now and then.

Thomas Thomas works in the legendary studio Into You Tattoo of the great Alex Binnie - the teacher of Xed le Head. Thomas often visited this salon, he studied there himself. Thomas is dissatisfied with almost all modern masters and has developed his own version of the neotribal style. His work consists of a huge number of lines and dots and looks very detailed, but has almost no details as such. Thomas' signature style has become a closed pattern that looks like one piece - like an optical illusion suit that starts on the back and goes to the arms and legs.

Mark Reidman studied with Gerhart Wiesbeck, one of the main masters of the old school. In his works he combines tribal and ethnic motifs, optical illusions and the Orient. His tattoos are almost always done in black and red. He also became famous for his special love for swastikas: he called his first tattoo parlor “Swastika”, which caused a big stir in Germany. Not so long ago, Mark closed his salon, protesting against the mass production of tattoos, in addition, he stopped attending tattoo conventions and traveling - in general, the word "eccentric" suits him like no other. He now sees one client a day and believes that tattoos should become a more personal and memorable experience. For the same reason, he does not make blanks, but draws directly on the body.

Michael I. Bennett, a tattoo artist from California, has recently joined the dotwork world. By itself, do-it-yourself work in America is not so widespread - except for exceptions, such as Cooper, this practice has remained more and more European.

Michael belongs to a new wave of tattoo artists - those who discovered this style around 2008. Michael gets tattoos at the famous California studio 2Spirit Tattoo. While Bennett likes Jondix, Cooper, and Xed le Head, Coleman's heavy lines and soft shadows are his biggest influences, leading Bennett to call his tattoo style "traditional."