I recently wrote about the increasing popularity of cross tattoos, as the overall tattoos trend embracing numerous designs and representative lifestyles. Another tattoo trend which is even growing larger than cross tattoos, is tribal tattoos.

Tribal tattoos have a fascinating history because it had almost been lost until Don Ed Hardy got together with Leo Zulueta to resurrect the art form.

The primary source which brought tribal tattoos into the mainstream was a magazine launched by Hardy called Tattoo Times, which had a strong focus on tribal tattoos. It became wildly popular among certain portions of the population.

Leo Zulueta grew up in Hawaii, and is of Filipino descent. He met Don Ed Hardy and Hardy took him under his wing and mentored and encouraged Zulueta in his desire to see more traditional and "pretechnological" themes in the tattooing field.

When Zulueta live in Hawaii, he observed that indigenous tattoo traditions had been largely abandoned by native Hawaiians, and he entered into that gap to encourage them to embrace those tattoo traditions again.

Hardy's major role in the process was to encourage Zulueta to collect as many tattoo photos and drawings of native tattoos as he could.

He would go to public libraries and photocopy anything he could find on tribal tattoos. Hardy continued pushing Zulueta to continue his work.

At that time (1977), Hardy started tattooing Zulueta, and Zulueta ended up starting to tattoo punk kids living in southern California in 1981.

Much of his inspiration came from their demands for unique styles which pushed him further toward tribal tattoos as him main focus.

Enough of tribal tattoo history, let's get into more of seeing the unique art of tribal tattoos, which has moved quickly toward a very distint style, which once viewed, is immediately recognized, even if it's not known by name.

One unusual aspect of tribal tattoos is the seeming simplicity of their design, which some tattooers consider beneath them because of that simplicity, which seems to offend their artistic sensibilities, not being considered enough of a challenge, and not wanting to look like amateur artists to their peers.

It must be understood that I'm talking about simple tribal tattoo designs when I mention this, not the more complex.

The truth is tribal tattoos, while in the modern demand may look simple on the skin, are in reality very difficult to properly apply.

Because much of the tribal motif is black, it looks like simple application is all that's needed, but the single color makes it even more important to keep the color even, not always easy to do.

Incidently, black tribal tattoos are the most popular today, as you can see in the photos.

Anyhow, that's not all to the art either. Choosing the right places to put a tribal tattoo is also not the easiest to do, because of the flowing lines included in the style.

They must be placed along the right muscle parts in order to look right, flowing along single muscle lines to look right.

You may have to do a little convincing to remind tattoo artists that it's not as easy as it looks, even if the end result looks simple.

I think the reason there's been such a resurgence and growth in popularity of tribal tattoos is the yearning of people to be reminded they're not alone; they want to be part of something bigger than themselves - a tribe of some sort.

So to put the ink on in a tribal motif offers the feeling of belonging to a community of like-minded people, even if they don't always have direct physical connections.

Because of that, tribal tattoos will continue to be a hot item in the tattooing world, and will be one of the most popular forms of ink people put on to express themselves.

Even so, it's just plain fun to have tribal tattoos put on your body, and that's also be huge motivator as well.

As you can see, there is an infinite variety of designs and blends that you can do with tribal tattoos, and that's one of the reasons it's so popular, along with making a very powerful statement - which is why it will remain in demand for a long time.

There's simply something about tribal tattoos, even when they seem simple, that catches the eyes of those viewing, and for someone being tattooed, that's a key reason behind doing it, no matter what the stated reason.

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