Having a light olive complexion myself, and an even darker skinned daughter, I’ve given a lot of thought and had some experience with tattooing color on a reasonable variety of skintones. Lately, as my client base has broadened, I have had the opportunity to work an even larger variety and ethnicity of clients and I believe that skintones and skintypes are a topic worth covering here. It is an interesting problem for a couple of reasons.

1st, as the artist, we must take into account that we’re not painting or drawing. Tattoo pigment does not lay on top of the skin like any colored medium you apply to any other surface. Tattoo pigment is injected into the skin, therefor the colors, (even black) are going to be affected by the natural skin pigment.

2nd, and perhaps the bigger problem, is explaining to/convincing the client that has her heart set on colors if/why her color/style choices are unsuitable.

When considering what colors are suitable for a particular skintone the simplest mental formula to use is the darker the skin, the bolder the color. It is impossible to estimate the variety and range of skintones we might be dealing with, so if we use generalities, we will be dealing with:

• Very Light (0% to 10% skin pigment)
• Medium-Light
• Dark-Light
• Light-Medium
• Medium (50% skin pigment)
• Dark-Medium
• Dark
• Dark-Medium
• Dark-Dark (90% to 100% skin pigment)

If that sounds difficult, just imagine 3 shades each of Light, Medium and dark skin. Get it?? Of course there is a wide range in between each of those shades, and I doubt that either 0% or 100% skin pigments exist, but the percentage scale seems the best way to approach the problem. Another way to visualize was suggested to me by a wonderful ad for Mom’s (Millennium) Inks in a recent trade journal. When considering colors to use imagine that the client’s skin is a sheet of tinted semi-transparent plastic in the client’s skintone. Imagine that plastic laying on top of your color choice. How does it look?? crisp and clear; unaffected?? (Lighter skintones) Or dark and muddy; muted?? (Darker skintones)

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Laid a lot of white in on this sitting. One more sitting should see the final detail work and retouch of the white. The claws need work yet and there’ll be green grass and her bloody kill. Too much fun, but the client will be sore after this one. White is OUCH!!!

Peace, out!

Wow! I’ve been MIA! The good news is it really was “action” of the good kind. My good friend from Fresno, “LaLa” and her sons showed up for a surprise visit. We used to be neighbors. Well; almost neighbors. About 5 minutes away when I lived “down the hill”, as we desert dwellers call anything South of the Cajon Pass.

Our pet name for each other was the same, “Muchacha Loca” (Crazy Woman). We were always too loud and had too much fun drinking Vente quad Starbucks (that’s 6 shots) and staying up all night crafting.

Crazy, fun times.

I could tell you stories, and maybe some day I will. For now suffice to say that it was wonderful to see her. We were too loud, and a little crazy; we laughed a lot and reminisced a little and drank buckets of my Ralphs (read: cheap) coffee (made palatable by adding fresh coarse ground cinnamon). We ate killer (read: my homemade and the GirlyBoi’s grilled) Carne Asada, and tattooed. Yep. Too much fun. Here’s what I designed for her son, who has been waiting 5 years (since he was 17) for a tattoo from his “Mema”.

 

I’ll have to touch this one up in a couple months to get the black nice and solid. My lil monkey had a few beers the night before and was bleeding like a stuck pig. Hehe. Click on the thumbnails for a couple of detail shots.
 

Peace, out!