Everyone has heard of the horror stories, wanting "strength" and getting "wimp". Getting Chinese characters for a tattoo is a risky business for a few reasons. Foreign artists will just copy from a book or dictionary without intimately knowing the nuances of each character. They don't know that a missed stroke or a misplaced dot can change or remove all meaning from the character. And finally, Chinese characters are like every other written language, just printing out a font from your computer lacks soul, think a calligrapher's hand written type versus Times Font. Ting is an accomplished calligrapher, each section of each character is joined delicately with a quick swipe of the brush and important strokes are used with a heavy hand, take your pick between her left or right hand, she is ambidextrous.
Have a quick look below at some of the gothic, hand written, Chinese, Tibetan, Nepalese, ancient and modern type tattoos created by Shanghai Tattoo.
