The Defining Choice, Tattoo Sizing.

Its a point of contention between tattoo artist and client, what size will your tattoo be?

Often times, clients want they’re tattoo to be smaller for a variety of reason and the tattoo artist wants it to be bigger, this can sometimes lead to clients feeling like they’re not being listened to. So in this post I hope to explain why your artist might be pushing you to go for a larger size and why often its in your best interest.

Detail

A misconception I often come across is that you can fit all the detail that you want in a small tattoo. Whilst mechanically it can be done it isn’t something that should be done.

Due to the nature of tattoos healing over years ink will migrate and the more detail you have in one inch of tattoo the more that detail will merge together and become unreadable.

Flow

Tattoos should be designed with the body and not against it, this means taking into account not only the shape of the muscule but the size of it as well. Often times an oppurtunuty is missed to make more of an impact with a design due to size constrants.

Readability

a good way to test out the size of your tattoo is to print the tattoo out into paper place it on a wall and look at it from across the room. Can you make out what it is supposed to be ? if you blur your eyes can you still understand the basic shapes ? if not that means one of two things, the design is too small or it has too much detail making it muddy.