By: Goher Iqbal Punn, askMamu.com

Tattoos’ fashion is very much IN these days. Not only in the west but also across the globe, this is being treated as a fashion statement. In Bollywood industry, this has also been witnessed hugely though they carry artificial tattoos but this is being seen. Off the screen, real tattoos have also been noticed such as: Hrithik Roshan got his wife’s name inked on his wrist and Saif Ali Khan got his girlfriend Kareena Kapoor’s name inked on his arm. Both have done so to show how much they love and care their beloveds.

This trend has penetrated into the Indians as well, as many Indians are getting the portraits of their loved ones (instead of names) inked on their body. These days, the fashion of getting the portraits inked on the bodies is developing hugely in Indians.

In this season, portraits of loved ones and Gods are running hugely. The people are doing so to show the care they have for their loved ones.

A renowned tattoo maker Verma says, “People prefer portraits of their spouses, girlfriends and kids. In fact, I recently did a portrait of a guy’s girlfriend on his arm. One of my other famous portraits has been Heath Ledger’s character – The Joker – from ‘The Dark Knight’. People also like to have gods like Shiva, Rama, Krishna and Sai Baba.”

Although getting the portraits inked on the body is getting popularity, but the fact remains that to do it right is very hard.

To make a portrait, it takes close to six hours to be done. These are mostly done on a small size varying from 5X5 to 5X6 inches because a lot of detailing goes into it like hair colour, eyes, lips, etc.

To design a tattoo on the body, much hard work is done. There is a particular thing involved in tattoos called shading that is done with grey wash ink – a mixture of black ink and distilled water.

On the other hand, portraits appear to be the most time consuming and hardest items to be done on body. Why because there are wrinkles on the skin and not a single wrinkle is missed from shading.

Another famous tattoo maker Ajit Singh tells, “Images have a lot of intricacies and they have to be of a favourable size – a minimum of about five inches. You can’t have very small portraits or the image will lose its intricacy.”

In addition to grey color, golden and blue colours are also used in portraits.

Normally the portraits are made in black and white colours, but if there appears some requirement other colours are also used.

Initially, tattoos were just a fad, but now it has emotional connotation.

Ajit Singh further expresses, “Portraits are done by people who very strongly relate to something like parents and even a dog. Recently a 32-year-old woman had her dog inked on her arm. There is no specific age group that follows the trend though.”

Today, tattoo is more about an emotional attachment. Normally when people want to have second tattoo on body, they want something that relates to their first tattoo. Today, people come up with many ideas in mind, as things have changed a lot and getting the tattoo inked on body is no more than a fashion statement.

The trend of portrait tattoos began a decade back abroad. But in India, it got popularity just a year and a half ago.

Whether this trend is increasing rapidly around the world, but the fact is that it is not good to get it inked on body.