Tattoo flash is one or more tattoo designs printed or drawn on a sheet of paper or cardboard. Tattoo flash is usually displayed on the walls of tattoo shops in order to give customers design ideas for tattoos.
Traditionally, tattoo flash was designed by a tattooist for display in his own shop. Tattooists sometimes traded or sold flash sheets among themselves.
Today, hand-drawn, local tattoo flash is rare. Many flash artists (who may or may not be tattooists) make multiple color photocopies or prints of flash and sell them at tattoo conventions or on the internet. As a result, contemporary tattoo shops display flash from many artists. Newcomers to the tattoo flash industry wishing to publicise their designs sometimes freely distribute flash on their web pages or websites with free flash designs.
While there is no standard size for tattoo flash sheets, the most common are 11x14 inches in the US in landscape format and A3 in Europe. Also the letter and A4 formats are getting more popular in recent years, since more color printers print these formats.
A set of tattoo flash may or may not come with an "outline" (also known as "line drawings" or "stencils". The outline is typically printed on a separate sheet, one for each sheet of tattoo flash. This is convenient for the tattooist, who otherwise would have to draw an outline himself in order to make the stencil for the linework of the tattoo.
Today, many people find tattoo flash as single designs on the internet in various ways and forms to bring to a tattooist and have tattooed. While some people will have a tattoo flash design tattooed exactly as they found it (either on the wall of a tattoo shop or on the internet) many will decide to use tattoo designs they found as reference for use in a custom tattoo. This can be done either by modifying a design or combining elements of multiple designs.
Although this method of obtaining the design for a tattoo is becoming more and more common, tattooists and the tattoo public should be aware that the reproduction of images obtained from the internet, books and magazines and all similar sources will in most cases be a breach of copyright. Most images displayed on the internet are NOT in the public domain, the owner of the original artwork, photograph or image having NOT given express permission for it to be reproduced. Copyright holders can, in most countries, take action against the tattoist who has worked from and the person who has illeglly supplied the copyrighted picture. For this reason, many of the top tattoo flash sites are now offering for sale legally downloadable individual designs.