Dark Style Tattoos

The signature style of Paul Booth, one of the most incredible tattoo artists of the entire contemporary scene, ‘Dark Style’ is hard to put a very exact finger on; at the most primary level it’s just ‘twisted’ art, anything that carries a theme of ‘evil’ – demons, zombies, vampirical pin ups, the like. It’s possible to say that Dark Style developed the way it did with thanks to heavy influence from horror movie culture of the past half century. This quickly explains the frequently recurring inked images of Linda Blair playing a possessed Regan, the blank-eyed zombies and the Freddies, Jasons and Frankensteins to be found in nearly every Dark Style Portfolio known! Besides the scary flicks, hundreds of years of art and imagery of demons, devils, imps, ogres, goblins and ghouls are put to employment for Dark Style. There’s the influence of reams of artistic ‘hell’ images, too: sleeves featuring the faces of the seven deadly sins and the blazing inferno of the afterlife are popular. The best of Dark Style has a very big tendency towards realism; faces are rounded and shaded, effectively rendered in black and grey: emotive and weird expressions are clear, as are evil glares and twisted sneers. Pop culture, Medieval and Renaissance art styles all collide neatly to contribute to this particular, much-loved genre of tattoo art – it’s a style that takes skill and finesse to do well!