In our latest collection of tattoos by our talented sponsored artists, we take a look at the fine art of watercolour tattoos!

This style of tattoo is super popular, and while some artists will experiment with the style occasionally, the best results often come from artists who are dedicated to the style! Characterised by softly blended colours and water splatters, it may be used with or without blackwork lines.

The real art of watercolour tattoos comes from subtle shading, and the intentional creation of the natural kind of mistakes that appear in watercolour painting. Check out just a few of our top picks for watercolour tattoo art!

Hettie Baker & Tom Petucco - Floral Watercolour Tattoo

Floral and botanical tattoos in the watercolour style are an incredibly popular alternative to a vibrant flower piece with solid saturation. This is probably due to the fact that in botanical illustrations, watercolours are one of the most popular paint mediums, often used alongside pencil or ink.

Hettie Baker is a queen of botanical illustration tattoos in both colour and black and grey, and has made a living out of sowing beauty onto her customers’ skin! These asymmetrical bunches of poppies, lavender, daisies and wild lavender are done with sketch-style outlines and delicate, muted colours.

Tom Petucco is usually more on the graffiti/new school end of the painting-style spectrum, but this incredible poppies piece is a real stand-out in the watercolour style. While the bottom poppy is fairly realistic, the larger one is much more fluid, and they’re backed by a soft watercolour wash background.

Ivana Belakova & Fernando Bisceglia - Watercolour Butterfly Tattoo

Butterflies are popular motifs for watercolour tattoos, as they’re both colourful and delicate!

Ivana Belakova’s art style is pretty avant-garde, and while this butterfly has an unmistakable watercolour feeling to it, most of the drips and splatters appear to be in ink. The colour squares on the butterfly’s wings and the gradual fading out to the edges are interesting interpretations of the style!

Fernando Bisceglia’s watercolour butterfly woman looks as though it’s been painted on with broad, expressive strokes - it combines the woman’s face with butterfly swings with a nebula-inspired background that splashes out across the chest.

David Giersch & Ina Lutaric - Cat Watercolour Tattoo

After flowers, animals might be the next most popular theme for watercolour tattoos, and our pets usually come first when it comes to favourite animals! Sometimes the animal itself comes in watercolour, and sometimes it’s used as a framing device, as in these two pieces!

David Giersch’s pair of cats are done in a colour realism style that could easily still be described as watercolour, but you’ll notice that there’s also an abstract paint splatter watercolour framing around each, with distinctive colours.

Ina Lutaric has taken a similar approach, with a fairly realistic cat on a watercolour splatter background - we love the water droplet paw print that looks almost 3D!

Craig Measures & Olive Tats - Fox Watercolour Tattoo

Who doesn’t love a fox tattoo? Whether you’re more of a country fox or a city fox, there’s something incredibly beautiful about these animals that comes through in watercolour tattoos.

Craig Measures’ fox piece is done very simply but with a powerful effect. The blackwork flower and simple outlines to the fox are softened by the splattered water effect of the orange “paint”, the only colour used in this piece.

Olive from Unit Two used more vibrant ink splatters around the edges of this watercolour-tinted fox staring upwards. The fox has a slight neo-traditional look to its face, with ink sketch-style outlines and some stipple shading to add detail on top of the colour.

Cloto & Joanne Baker - Watercolour Heart Tattoo

Two gorgeous hearts here in the unmistakable colours of the bisexual pride flag!

Cloto’s watercolour work is unusual in that it has a lot more thick black lines than other examples - in both of these tattoos she’s drawn a solid black outline and then offset the coloured filling slightly, finishing around the edges with a few random-looking paint splatters.

Joanne Baker’s has a very similar vibe, but this single piece is made up of three overlapping hearts, each with a nebula of blue, pink and purple projected behind them. This could easily be expanded into a larger piece!

Koray & Rysaa - Watercolour Splash Tattoo

Some artists prefer to use the watercolour technique to create abstract imagery that’s still almost instantly recognisable!

Koray is a bonafide expert in painting-style tattoos, although his work is usually skewed to acrylic- and oil-looking styles. In this simple but very effective forearm piece, he uses blackwork to create the symbols for Air, Water, Fire and Earth, and creates a complementary coloured splash within the triangles.

Rysaa’s expertise is in sketch-style work, but she’s no stranger to a bit of watercolour action! In this flowing shoulder piece, she uses a combination of watercolour-style blues and fine line blackwork to create a really unique-looking version of Haku from Spirited Away - look closely and you’ll see that some of the ink splatters are actually soot sprites!

If you’ve loved this collection of watercolour tattoos, you’ll find loads more on our Instagram, Facebook, or dedicated Pinterest board which is filled with even more inspirational watercolour tattoos!