Tattoo Technique Advanced Color

Tattoo Technique
Advanced Color

There is nothing better than taking a talent and honing it into
something better then you ever thought you could. In this section I want to
cover a few advanced techniques to better help you become a true artist. The
problem is never seeing it inside your head, just putting it on skin. One of the
best ways to improve your skill is to set up in your color work. Custom colors
will defiantly make your mark in the tattoo field. Tattoo pigments mix very
well together. Play with different color combinations to get some unique
colors. Color blending is another technique that will bring your art to life.
Currently there are about sixteen million color hues that the human eye can
see, use them all. Take a plain old kanji (Japanese calligraphy) for example.
Not every thing you do has to be solid black. One of my more popular color
combinations is magenta and dark purple. You fill the kanji in with the
magenta then wash the purple starting with the bottom as the dark line and
work up. This gives an otherwise flat looking image a little more definition. I
know I said before not to tattoo the lighter pigment first, but this is another
color technique. Once the magenta is filled in, the skin is now open. While
you wash shade the purple it will dye the magenta darker. If you wipe
upwards into the magenta it will smooth out the color blending. Sort of like
rubbing a pencil drawing with you finger to blend the graphite. A few other
good colors to do this with is light blue and dark blue, light green and dark
green, yellow and red, light aqua blue and dark purple, white and light blue,
and magenta with dark green. They can make for some strange color
combination, but they look great. Yellow and orange make a gold metallic
affect. Some other things to think about with color is to add more. If you are
tattooing simple vine work, why just use green? Try light neon green and
shade the leaves and vines with a washed dark green for definition. The more
colors you can apply the more depth and realism the image will have.
Decaling
Decaling is another advanced color trick. It works best with bright
colors and small tattoos. Do the entire tattoo and when you are done, line
the outside line with white. Just like with bold lining only not as thick, just
the width of another out line. Don’t do any outside lines either. This trick is
called decaling because it makes the entire tattoo look like a sticker of a fake
tattoo. The image will jump off of the skin. Unfortunately it doesn’t work
well with black and grey or light color work. It looks cool, but it won’t look