A lot can be said with a limited amount of colors in a tattoo. Many people choose to have what they call blackwork tattoos where the entire tattoo uses only one color. The color black that is used for these blackwork tattoos is sometimes also used mainly for the outline of a tattoo, since the outlines need to be crisp and dark.
Although there are a lot of tattoos out there filled with vibrant colors and rich detail, it is not always necessary to use so many colors in order to get the point of your tattoo across to it’s viewers. With the proper shading, spacing, and use of lines and shapes, an intricately detailed tattoo, made with only black ink, can sometimes look even more spectacular than if it was made with three or four or even five colors.
Traditional tattoos from years and years ago were normally made with just one color, the only color available to them. Prison tattoos are made with just one color, normally black, and it seems some people are going back to tattoo’s roots and using only black in their designs and creations. There have even been tattoos created that cover a person’s entire arm in solid black, as if they were wearing a long sleeve, tight fitting black tshirt. Others have placed black blocks in places upon their body, giving the impression of a censor bar that might be seen in a picture or on TV.
Since the invention of colored tattoo ink, people have been asking for their tattoos to be rich and full of life. Just about any color in the spectrum can be made, including white to some degree, so why limit yourself to just a solid black when you can have anything you can think of in your piece? Well, because the solid black tattoo can also hold different meaning to you, along with it’s simplicity and the beauty behind it’s simplicity.
An old tattoo, it’s colors faded and blurry, can be brought back to life by retracing it’s lines with new colors, making it look as if it was freshly done and it had not sat on that persons back for years and years. It can also be brought to life, depending on it’s current shape and outline, by making the entire thing one solid color, shading the entire thing in black, like a large dark shadow or a black birthmark, an extension of the person who wears it, dark and crisp and noticeable from yards away down a crowded boardwalk.
Solid black tattoos can also come in handy for those that are colorblind since black can be seen by everyone with sight capable eyes. Black, be definition being the absence of color, can give off a unique shine and quality that becomes beautiful without having any other accenting colors to go along with it.
