Black LanternRichmond, Virginia Start a consultation

Custom tattoo · Richmond, Virginia

Bring your idea. We will draw it with you.

Black Lantern is a tattoo collective in Richmond, Virginia. Everything starts at the table: you bring the idea, we bring the pencil, and the drawing gets worked out together — before anything touches skin.

Start a consultation See how a consultation works
  • Custom tattoos
  • Flash
  • Cover-ups
  • Blackwork
Overhead view of a tattoo consultation table lit by a brass lantern, with an open sketchbook and pencils
On the table: sketchbook, pencil, stencil paper, machine.

The consultation

Tell us the idea. We will show you how it becomes a tattoo.

A consultation is not a sales meeting. It is the two of us at a table with paper, working out what the piece is, where it goes, and how it holds together. You leave with a drawing direction, not a guess.

Stencil paper, a pencil and a ruler on a dark worktable under warm lamp light
Stencil paper and pencil, ready for the transfer.
  1. 01

    Bring the idea

    Words, a photo, a song lyric, a rough sketch on the back of a receipt. It does not need to be neat and it does not need to be finished.

  2. 02

    We draw it with you

    A custom drawing built around your idea, your placement, and the shape of the body it is going on.

  3. 03

    Refine at the table

    We sit over the sketch and move things — scale, detail, line weight — until it reads the way you pictured it.

  4. 04

    Book the chair

    Once the drawing is settled, we find a time that works and get you in.

A sheet of hand-drawn tattoo flash designs on paper resting on a dark table
A flash sheet, drawn by hand.

Flash

Drawn and ready. Pick one off the sheet.

Flash tattoos are designs drawn ahead of time. Choose the piece you want, tell us where it is going, and we will work out the size and placement with you before we book it in.

  • The drawing is already done Every flash piece exists before you walk in, so the design decision is already made.
  • Sized to your placement We scale it to the arm, leg, back or shoulder it belongs on, so it sits right on the body.
  • Fewer decisions, same care The conversation moves to placement, size and fit — and we still draw it onto you first.
Ask about a flash piece

Cover-ups

Cover-ups start with the piece you want gone.

Cover-up work is drawn around what is already on the skin — its darkness, its size, its shape — so the new piece has something to build on.

A tattoo artist's hands working a tattoo machine over a client's forearm in warm lamp light
Work in progress under the lamp.

What we look at together

Bring the old tattoo in. We look at what is already on the skin, how much room it gives us, and draw something new that works with it rather than fighting it.

  • What is on the skin now, and how dark it sits
  • How much black the new drawing needs to carry it
  • Where the new piece lands so the old one disappears into it
Start a cover-up consultation

Blackwork

Solid black. Sharp edges. Space that breathes.

Blackwork is built from heavy fills, bold linework, and the negative space left between them. It is the loudest thing on the table, and it gives cover-up work somewhere new to go. We draw the whole thing with you first — the weight of the black, the edges, the gaps.

  • Solid fills
  • Bold linework
  • Geometric and ornamental pieces
  • Blackout sections
Start a consultation
Close-up of a blackwork tattoo in progress on a forearm, with solid black fills and bold linework
Blackwork, mid-session.

Book the table

Start a consultation.

Tell us the idea in your own words — what it is, where it is going, how big you are picturing. Send it over and we will take it from there.

  • References you like
  • Photos of the placement
  • The size you are picturing
Consultation request

Tell us as much or as little as you like.