Sera Helen's Old School Blackwork Love

If you loved the staple tattoo pieces from the 90s, then you're going to be seriously in love with Sera Helen's refined blackwork tattoos featuring classic tattoo elements like barbed wires, burning hearts, and Old English. 

New Zealand-based tattoo artist Sera Helen recreates old school tattoo elements by executing them in a more refined modern blackwork style. Her works feature staple pieces like roses, hearts, and spiders, as well as tattoos considered to be clichéd that have been frowned upon in the recent years like barbed wires, Old English scripts, and tribal-like designs. She makes them all look fresh and sophisticated through gorgeous fine lines, well-blended blackwork shading, and clean details.

Sera embraced all the good, the bad, and the ugly in terms of tattoo designs and turned them into something wearable. She got rid of what's unnecessary and what made a certain tattoo design cliché and tacky — such as softening the grayscale shadings and refining the linework.

Sera currently tattoos at Two Hands Tattoo in Auckland, New Zealand.

All the photos of Sera Helen's work are from her Instagram.