10/11/2025
Interesting tidbit about tattoo stencils :)
I always get comments from clients like "how can you see that" "I don't know how you go from purple squiggles to a portrait" to name a few .
I thought it may be interesting to explain stencils a little :)
While largely similar every tattooist does stencils differently , but they're all basically like a language, it's lines and shapes that tell us which part of the image we are working on.
I can read other artists stencils but mine are second nature to me, I don't see the purple shapes i see the image. They help keep the scope of the tattoo in line so I don't spend a bunch of time on parts that don't need it and they keep anatomy and shape structured.
Having said that, I don't actually need stencils to do my work, I can do it by sight alone. However that is a much much slower process, something I could do in 1 session with a stencil might take 2-2.5 sessions
without one. That time is important without the stencil as we need to make sure the features are accurate, the shape is right etc which is why pretty much all of us use stencils over freehand for complicated work and realism.
Hope that was informative and interesting :)
What other questions about tattooing do you have? Drop them in the comments :)
