RSSBrowsing Category: "About Tattoos"
The classic piece of tattoo design, dagger through the heart, successfully manages to capture both our attention and our emotions. The real power of the image of a dagger through the heart is the combination of two symbols which are well known in their own right. The heart has long represented the seat of the emotions and the very core of a person. Similarly, the dagger is not just any weapon. It long ago became the stealthy weapon of choice for assassins since it was easily concealed and quiet. As such, it inflicted much more than just a stab wound, carrying with it an additional sense of betrayal and hurt, since the attacker had to be close to be effective. So, the heart-with-dagger tattoo is essentially the heart in great pain, perhaps mortally wounded, sometimes a love betrayed, and sometimes even a sacrifice made.
When you go for a tattoo, the experience is usually much the same for everyone. You speak with the artist at the shop, pick out a design (such as flash or your own creation, and the process begins. After a stencil is applied where you want your tattoo to be, the first part of the actual tattoo begins - with black ink. Black ink is used to outline tattoos, in order to give the tattoo its shape, as well as to create an image which then can be colored or shaded. Without this black outline, many tattoos would not look “normal”, or be as sharp. For years, tattoo artists were unwilling to do a tattoo without a black outline to follow as a guide; however, things have started to change.
White ink tattoos do not follow the usual tattoo process of stenciling and outlining in black. Instead, the tattoo itself is completely done with white ink - leaving a ghostly image that looks quite different from a traditional tattoo. These tattoos can look like brands (or scarification), or they can appear to be very subtle - a good idea for someone who wants a tattoo but can’t have something obvious in their work environment. The white ink used for white ink tattoos is not the same ink you might have seen used for mixing shades in a color tat - instead, it is a thicker, high quality white ink that is specially made to stand out on its own.
