Depends on the darkness of your skin.
I’m Puerto Rian; and we a wide range from almost white to dark tan. I’m about in the middle…I have red, yellow, purple, bright blue, regular blue, green, and yellow on my skin and they all show up well.
For “Black” [simple] people aka “African Americans” obviously black ink will be the most used.
Do you have a pic of yourself? I’m sure you could get better answers with a picture.
Its not always the base color. Sometimes it is the ink manufacturer. For the average light skinned person, average inks are fine. Mom’s Millenium makes a decent wide range of colors, but when you move to darker skin tones, browns, “reds” (which is more accurately an Umber) then these inks are really no longer sufficient. You want a better ink quality with brighter bolder colors. Your skin tone will tone the bright colors down, but the bright colors will still show through.
Some colors don’t heal true. Meaning that in the ink cup they may look deep red, but when they heal, they heal a dull, faded, almost pink.
Years ago on the west coast a “black” tattoo artist experimented with a unique style of reverse shading. Kind of using the same concept you would use on a scratch board. He used white ink to define the shape and areas we would normally leave blank on a caucasion, and left the natural skin color for dark shade. It was a fantastic excercise and looked great.
Here’s the problem. On most people white disperses over time, so my question was “How will the tattoo look in a year” I never heard anything else about it, so I never was able to have my question answered.
The quality of ink you would need…in my opinion…would mean that you would pay more than average for your tattoo work, but its worth the investment.
Just my opinion.The majority of my work has been on caucasions or olive skinned people. What work I’ve done on darker skin has almost exclusively been in black.
Some colors don’t heal true. Meaning that in the ink cup they may look deep red, but when they heal, they heal a dull, faded, almost pink.
Years ago on the west coast a “black” tattoo artist experimented with a unique style of reverse shading. Kind of using the same concept you would use on a scratch board. He used white ink to define the shape and areas we would normally leave blank on a caucasion, and left the natural skin color for dark shade. It was a fantastic excercise and looked great.
Here’s the problem. On most people white disperses over time, so my question was “How will the tattoo look in a year” I never heard anything else about it, so I never was able to have my question answered.
The quality of ink you would need…in my opinion…would mean that you would pay more than average for your tattoo work, but its worth the investment.
Just my opinion.The majority of my work has been on caucasions or olive skinned people. What work I’ve done on darker skin has almost exclusively been in black.
Do you have a name of this guy? I’d love to see an example of that tattoo.
Hi
It really depends on the menalin intereaction with the pigment used in the ink.
I did a few interviews with darker toned ppl ranging from olive to dark brown in colour as part of my tattoo research.
As stated the results varied those with the darkest skin tones stated that black was the most clear colour followed by red pigment.
However in 2 of the 10 I discussed this with who had very dark toned skin they need 3 layers of red ink to go from pink to red and even then it was quite dull.
Intenze seemed to be quite popular.
Depending on skin tone it roughly works (assuming a darker pigment tone);
Black (strongest)
Red
Blue
Purple
Green
Orange
Yellow
White (weakest)
Best way is to find an artist with exp in dealing with darker skin tones and ask around for examples of ppl with tattoos of a similar skin type to yourself.
Take Care
Matthew
Hi Koi
Again it depends on the quality of the inks used and the pigment shade.
Some colours such as pink, white or yellow may not come through as strongly or last as long but purples, some blues, deep reds etc can work very well.
You are best finding an artist who is experienced in dealing with your skin colour as they will know what works best.
Even with white ppl it can be hard to get certain colours to work as everybody is different and the shades of skin pigment vary massively even within the same broad ethnic groupings.
Take care
Matthew
I’ve always wondered bout the standard base colour of tattoos…there’s obviously the standard black, but then i’ve seen loads of tats on brown skin which looks a darky green.
Is this just the black that has faded over time? Or is is due to other reasons?
Reason im asking is that I like the colour, and if it’s a specific ink I can ask parlours whether they have it
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