Black and Grey Tattoo in Bury
Hey everyone, thanks for looking at my tattoo blog, in this blog I would like to mention about the latest black and grey tattoos I have been up to, and also talk about black and grey tattoos in general, black and grey is a style that has been done a lot lately, it is the preferred style by most of tattoo collectors nowadays.
I was approached by Mark for a thigh black and grey tattoo. He loves heavy metal, so he wanted the album cover of the Slipknot album “Lowa” on the front of his thigh, the Lowa album was released in 2001, so the art work of the album is a little dated in my eyes, but I was glad when Mark was open minded to listen to me, and allow me to re-design the Slipknot classic second album. So I designed to album for him, and he was happy with the end result. The front of his leg, the Slipknot part, was done in 2 sessions, working with Mark on the first session I was really happy as he was so patient and chilled, so I knew it was going to be a success. A successful tattoo also comes with a lot of patience and having a good attitude when getting tattooed.
After we finished the Slipknot front of his thigh, his second request also brought a smile to my face, which it was, a Five Finger Death Punch album cover or logo, I believe it was a logo more than an album cover. Craig was sure to request that around the skull logo design he wanted all bio-mechanical, I knew it was gonna be fun, as soon as he mentioned that, as I love to free-hand bio-mechanical on the human body, you can make it look like the client was already born with the tattoo on their body, following the human body shape.
Studying Victor Portugal’s work, I was able to free hand that bio-mechanical around my clients thigh tattoo. Studying textures really help when you are about to tattoo objects that requires texture, and as we know most objects contain textures, we can not see texture in every image we see, or use for tattoos, however, most objects when observed in real life from close they do have texture. So when approaching a black and grey tattoo, it is important to understand texture.
Mark was in to heavy metal as you can see on his request, it’s easy to tattoo Heavy Metal fans for me, as I can resonate with it, I’m not a metal head as people call it, but I did used to be, and it was a big part of my life. As Mark was a big 5 finger death punch fan, he requested for me to play the band in his last session, I must admit I enjoyed it and I liked them, however, to be totally honest, everyone I listen to another heavy metal band, I appreciate them, however, when I’m listening to them, in the back of my head, I’m thinking Sepultura is so much better than that. I try to find a band that I think is better than Sepultura but I can’t. I think from Beneath the remains to Roots, they became a new band every album they released.
Back to black and grey tattoos. Black and grey tattoos are very peaceful to do, as a Tattoo Artist, it is less stressful than colour tattoos, and it does flow a lot more natural in a tattoo session. Black and grey tattoos are also easy to heal too, they are more likely to have a better heal than colour tattoos.
In the beginning of my career, I worshipped some black and grey tattoo artists like Victor Portugal, Carlos Torres, and Bob Tyrell. I would say Bob Terrell was the first one, because he only didn’t do horror tattoos like Paul booth, but he also did a lot of portrait and wild life, he was the first black and grey Tattoo Artist to do black and grey in general really clean and almost perfect looking.
Nowadays we see a lot more black and grey artists, and a lot of good ones as well, so many that sometimes I forget about those classic guys who first inspired me, however, as soon as the love for black and grey tattoos does not die out, I will have the passion to learn and study black and grey tattoos, as it’s infinite to enter a journey about shading and to really learn how the shadow falls in the object, it requires a lot of study and interest in the subject, however, only the passionate ones, will sacrifice their free time in order to learn something new, or what they are passionate about.
I believe black and grey tattoos are always going to be a part of Tattooing, however black and grey tattoos may evolve.
