Are you an artist at heart? Do you look at a blank page and feel a desire to fill it with something beautiful? Do you see a plain wall and get an urge to transform it into a canvas that speaks to the soul?
If either of these situations describes you, then you're probably destined to be an artist. Did you realize that some artists use the human body as their canvas? It's true! What are we talking about? In this case, we're talking about tattoo artists!
Tattoos are created by using special tools that use needles to insert permanent ink into the dermis layer of the skin. The ink changes the pigment of the skin where it's inserted, creating a work of art that lives on in the skin for years and years.
Tattoos have been popular across many different cultures for thousands of years. In fact, tattoos can have many different meanings to various cultures, including status symbols, religious beliefs, declarations of love, forms of punishment, and even just decoration.
Since real tattoos are intended to be permanent, people usually put a lot of thought into what a tattoo will say or look like and where it will go. As a result, most tattoos have uniquely personal stories that go along with them.
Of course, not all tattoos are permanent. Even tattoos intended to be permanent can now often be removed with the help of special procedures that use lasers to remove or lighten the ink under the skin. Some tattoos, though, are only intended to be temporary.
If you've been to a birthday party recently, you may have been given a temporary tattoo as a party favor. These fun tattoos are meant to be worn for a short while — maybe as long as a few days or a week — before being washed away with soap and water.
Some temporary tattoos are transferred to the skin like a sticker. Other temporary tattoos are drawn, painted or airbrushed onto the skin as a form of body painting. Temporary tattoos can look just like permanent tattoos. For example, actors in movies that appear to be tattooed often sport only temporary tattoos that have been painted on by professional makeup artists.
Another popular form of temporary tattoo important in cultures in southern Asia is known as henna or Mehndi. Henna tattoos use a paste made from the leaves of the Henna plant. Its dye binds with keratin in the skin.
Traditional henna tattoos are created as intricate, delicate designs on the hands and feet. However, the growing popularity of henna tattoos has led to their being used to create all sorts of designs all over the body today.
Henna tattoos only allow for a limited range of colors, including mainly shades of reds, browns and blacks. Henna tattoos fade naturally over the course of several days to several weeks as the outer layer of the skin is shed and replaced with new skin.