Dinosaur tattoos are great for archeology lovers, Jurassic Park fans, and anyone who loves huge and cool-looking animals.
They aren’t the most meaningful tattoo designs in the world, but that isn’t actually a big problem with dinosaurs because, well, they’re dinosaurs! Below you will find out why so many people opt to get dinosaur tattoos over all of the other tattoo options that are available to them.
Strength is probably the most common meaning attached to dinosaur tattoos today and for obvious reasons. Most dinosaurs make the “big” animals of today look like shrimps, so you could say that they are the ultimate symbols of strength in the animal world. It’s so obvious, in fact, that if you choose to use this meaning you don’t even have to tweak your design at all for people to know what it represents.
Similarly, power is another meaning that people like to use with their dinosaur tattoos. Power is different than strength, though, in that it represents the owner’s physical prowess rather than their physical and emotional strength. Someone who takes a lot of pride in being powerful, whether physically or in their working life, might find that this is the perfect dinosaur tattoo meaning for them.
We usually recommend that people do attach at least one deep meaning to their tattoos, but that’s not completely necessary with the dinosaur tattoo. The fact is that plenty of folks get their dinosaur tattoos simply because they love the look of the creatures or because they’re huge fans of archeology.
The most important thing is that you will always love your dinosaur design and your interest won’t fade as the years go by. If you’ve always been a fan of dinosaurs, then that’s a good enough reason to get one of these tattoos.
Dinosaurs happen to have extremely cool-looking skulls, so some people will opt to go that route rather than getting a living dinosaur in their designs. Skulls represent death and the tattoo owner’s acceptance of his or her mortality, but that’s not a meaning that you have to attach to dinosaur skull tattoos. These designs work extremely well going down the length of the forearm or even across the ribs.
One of the toughest decisions some people have is whether to get a realistic-looking dinosaur tattoo or a cartoony version. That’s really going to come down to personal taste and the meanings that you want to come across to outsiders. The cartoony version is a good one to get if you want to ensure that everyone knows that the dinosaur does not represent anything aggressive. Most people choose to get real dinosaurs in their designs since they like that menacing look.
Another tough decision for some folks is choosing a type of dinosaur to include in their designs. The T-Rex is easily the most popular, but there are also plenty of Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and other types that people love. Most of them don’t have their own meanings, so you really can choose your dinosaur by looks alone. If you wanted to go all-out or you simply can’t decide between two or three, you can include multiple dinosaurs in your design.
What’s great for some people is that they don’t even have to add a lot of detail to their dinosaur tattoos to use the exact same meanings as everyone else. The fact is that big, detailed dinosaur designs can be pretty expensive and outside of some people’s budgets. In these cases, you can choose to get an outline of a dinosaur or get a small silhouette.
If you do plan on getting a realistic dinosaur tattoo, you will want to think about whether you want it in color or in black and grey ink. You might think that you’ll definitely get it in color to make it look more realistic, but sometimes those colors don’t work with certain skin tones.
Going with a black and grey design could blend well with your skin while still looking incredible. In both cases, you’ll want to think about whether you want and background color or shading to make the dinosaur stand out a bit more.
We highly recommend that you figure out every inch of the dinosaur tattoo design that you want to get before committing to a place to put it on your body. You certainly could design something with a specific area in mind, but you could find out later that it doesn’t work as well as you had hoped. Instead, coming up with the entire design and then checking how it looks in different places can up the chances of you having a dinosaur tattoo that you’re truly happy with.
This probably goes without saying, but you absolutely have to work with a great tattoo artist when getting a dinosaur tattoo, especially one with a lot of detail. These tattoos can take a while to ink, so you want an artist who has experience with larger, detailed designs. These days it’s pretty easy to find good ones in your area; just check out reviews of some local shops and chances are there will be at least a few write-ups on the artists around you.
Considering that there are so many different dinosaurs to choose from and even more ways to have them designed, it’s really not too surprising that so many people choose to get dinosaur tattoos over all of the other tattoo designs out there. You can very easily make a dinosaur tattoo your own by simply taking an image and tweaking it a little bit.
Sure, the dinosaur tattoo isn’t quite as meaningful as other animal tattoos out there, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t love them just as much as those other animal tats. As long as your dinosaur design means something to you and you’re proud to wear it on your skin, that really is all that matters. Just be sure to take your time designing your dinosaur and get an experienced pro to do the work for you.