In order to apply a tattoo onto your skin, a tattoo artist needs a stencil.

If you think about it, before any artwork can be created, the artist needs a visual guide or outline of the design, before they can create their masterpiece. So the stencil is a line drawing of the actual tattoo and acts as a reference point for the tattoo artist. There are many places to get printable tattoo stencils on the internet.

A stencil is also known as a line drawing these line drawing are  run through a thermofax (or similar device) which results in the line drawings transferred to carbon paper. The tattoo artist then applies a liquid solution on the skin, and presses the carbon line drawings onto the skin. This provides an outline of the design on the skin, which acts as the  guide to create the actual tattoo.

The tattoo flash artist is the one who creates the stencil on paper, and it is this design that is then given to the tattoo artist who applies the tattoo onto the skin.  Some tattoo artists may use the stencil provided by the tattoo flash artist exactly the way it is, while others may alter the stencil depending on their creativity to create tattoos on the skin.

All tattoo artist generally use line drawings to create a tattoo. There are only a few tattoo artists that who tattoo freehand, but even they first create an outline of the artwork that’s in their mind with a pen before applying any ink, and hence they have still created a stencil of what the final design will look like.

When looking for tattoo designs online that you can print out and take to your tattoo artist, make sure there are printable tattoo stencils  as well. This way you know you have come across a quality tattoo website.