☞ The Menu · Pick a Lane ☜
Styles
three lanes, one bench
We don’t do everything — we do three things well. Pick the lane that fits your idea, read up on it, and we’ll point you at the right artist on the team.
☞ Traditional · Auckland CBD ☜
AMERICAN TRADITIONAL
bold lines that read across the room
Traditional — also called American Traditional, Old School, or Sailor Jerry — is the lineage we grew up looking at. Tight outlines, a tight colour palette (mostly red, gold, green, black), and the original tattoo motifs: tigers, eagles, daggers, swallows, panthers, anchors, hearts. It's tattooing that doesn't try to look like a print or a photograph — it commits to being a tattoo.
Read more☞ Black & Grey · Auckland CBD ☜
BLACK & GREY
soft smoke and slow shadows
Black and grey is tattooing in shades of one colour. Done well, it's the quietest and the loudest style at the same time — a fine cigar-smoke gradient that you don't notice across a room, then up close you realise the whole forearm is a hand-drawn portrait. It came up out of California prisons in the seventies (the original ink was watered-down pen ink and a sewing needle) and got pushed into fine-art territory by realism-focused studios across LA in the eighties and nineties. We sit firmly in that lineage.
Read more☞ Fineline · Auckland CBD ☜
FINELINE & SCRIPT
tiny pieces with big meaning
Fineline is exactly what it sounds like — single-needle line work, drawn at a scale closer to a fineliner pen than a tattoo machine. Big over the last five years, fuelled by Instagram and the rise of small-piece studios in Berlin, Seoul, and LA. We do a lot of it: minimalist florals, small animals, dotwork stipple, fineline portraits, and a fair amount of hand-drawn script.
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☞ Not sure which lane? ☜
Send us references and a rough vibe — we’ll tell you which lane fits, which artist on the bench is best for it, and roughly what it’ll cost.