For a few years the tribals led the game, then it was the turn of the Chinese and Arab ideograms, then the stylized figures. But the old school he was always there, with his handful of loyal tattoo artists and above all with its audience of Orthodox believers. And today he takes his revenge. Becoming an old school tattoo artist? A great adventure!
Of course, the hipsters have put a hand in it, they are the ones who have brought back the classic old school motifs on the front page, but now the wave of flood has arrived and it will not be a passing trend.
Teaching Old school technique to a course for tattoo artist it means going back to the origins of the tattoo phenomenon in the West, to remember one of the key figures in the history of this art in the twentieth century: Norman Keith Collins, aka Sailor Jerry, the sailor who conquered the world with his tattoos.
Born in Nevada in 1911, he grew up in Northern California and became a tattoo artist in Alaska, working exclusively by hand until the early 1930s. In 1939 he enlisted in the US Navy beginning to travel the length and breadth of the Pacific Ocean and deepening the tattoo culture of the people of the area. At the end of his time in the Navy Jerry stops in Hawaii, where he works as a tattoo artist and as a skipper on a three-masted schooner, playing saxophone in his dance music band in his spare time. In those serene and industrious years Jerry, without knowing it, will become an icon of tatooing and will throw the basis of the style that later will take the name of Old school.
It is therefore from his wandering and adventurous life that they are born the most recurring subjects in the history of tattoo art, the most studied in every self-respecting tattoo artist course. The anchor wrapped from the top, the wind rose, the swallow, the pin-up, the eagle, the dice, the dagger, the flaming heart, the cherries, the mermaid, the sailing ship… they were all designed for the first time by Sailor Jerry's hands.
As for the graphic style, the Old school can be recognized at first sight from'marked outline, with clear colors, with scarce shades and very rare shading. Zero abstractionism, no stylization, the old school stands out for the definition and clarity of the sign, which refers to the concreteness of real life, with its experiences and emotions, perhaps simple but sincere. And these are precisely the reasons why this expressive style will never cease to have its followers, above any trend of the moment.
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