Playing With Tattoo Elements By Manipulating Lights and Darks - Jake Meeks Fireside Tattoo Network

Playing With Tattoo Elements By Manipulating Lights and Darks

“I’m coming back with my lightest lights, and putting them in the light side of the turtle just to push that contrast and create texture to kind of pull that head forward a little bit.”

- Jake Meeks

Let’s talk about temperature for a little bit. How it generally works is warm colors push out or forwards towards the viewer and cool colors recede back. So what’s going on in the tattoo above is the warmth of the background is grabbing more attention than the foreground subject.

A little trick you can use is blending in a cooler version of that warm tone to sort of dampen and push that warm background away from the subject. Conversely adding in some warmer versions of the cool colors in the foreground can really help to pull that subject matter up front.

A couple other ideas to neutralize a strong color is by adding in a little bit of the complimentary of that color. So if you have a really warm red, adding in a little bit of green can help to gray that out a little and drive more attention towards the subject. You can also add in some brighter highlight areas to the cool foreground to help trail the eye even more.

Watch the full episode:

Tattoo Techniques: Covering Dark Ink With Light Fireside Technique EP 26