Does anybody have a good source or informations about tattoos of Picts? How they really looked like? Were they all blue? Most results I get are screenshots from movies and few sketches.

by nornica

I want to make a full body Pict tattoo composition. But for now I lack of material which I could show to the tattoo artist. After few weeks of searching thru the interweb I decided to seek help in this place. Thank You all in advance for any help!

intangible-tangerine

There's no direct evidence I'm aware of that the Picts even had tattoos.

Caeser makes a brief reference to Britons dying their skin in his account of the Gallic wars. Later Roman writers variously interpreted this as referring to tattoos or body paint, Celts or Picts, green or blue colouring etc.

We think of woad as being blue, we even have the term 'woad blue', but it's possible to achieve a range of colours using woad mixed with other ingredients.

We have indirect evidence of what Pictish body art may have looked like, via things like their stone carving designs, but any comments on their body art, if they had it, are speculation.

The Pictish Tattoo: Origins of a Myth By Richard Dibon-Smith PDF paper

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-truth-about-the-picts-886098.html

http://www.needlesandsins.com/2014/03/tattoo-history-myths-exposed.html (this references my first citation only, but gives wider context about prevalent body art myths)