Good tattoos are not cheap...cheap tattoos are not good!

Flash tattoos are cheap, but still hugely popular among many people getting tattoos for the first time. They are most likely to be low-quality and poorly drawn. Nearly 90% of the people requiring cover-ups or touch-ups to their tattoos have flash tattoos usually done from some free flash design that has done the rounds of the internet or from some backstreet tattoo parlours.

What's wrong with flash tattoos?

Flash tattoos are anything but original. They are based on ready-made, knocked up designs drawn by unknown 'artists' and sold in hundreds if not thousands of copies, worldwide or downloaded free on many websites. It's very likely if you get a flash tattoo that somebody somewhere has the exact same tattoo, most likely done in the exact same manner and possibly on same area of the body say for example lower back tribal tattoos.

Flash tattoos have nothing to do with what tattoo art should be which is creativity and uniqueness and reduces tattooing to little more than tracing. Flash tattoos lack one other important thing: meaning. They generally have no meaning to the person getting them done.

Tattoos should reflect a persons life and should at least have some meaning - not necessarily the meaning of the actual design but what it means to the person receiving it. This is the reason tattoo removal is big business. Keep in mind that it costs more 10 times the amount to get a tattoo removed as it does to get it done in the first place.

So if you are looking for tattoo designs forget flash tattoo designs. If you see free flash tattoo art on some website, or if the tattooist tells you to pick one from a sheet or 'off the wall' and doesn't draw your design free hand right in front of you but copies it on a piece of transparent tracing paper from a notepad go elsewhere. Always ask to see the tattooists portfolio of custom tattoos before committing to getting one done.

Remember - a tattoo is for life. Avoid tattoo flash!

Declan O Reilly