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Watercolor tattoos are preoccupying the tattoo world like nothing else has ever done. The tattoo world will never be the same with these incredible works of art hitting the body art world. A new breed of body art lover is welcoming this new way of permanent body artworks, while traditionalists are hanging on to their nautical stars and weeping in their bandanas.
So What Does “Watercolor Tattoo” Even Mean?
You aren’t painting a Turner sunset on a canvas, prior to affixing it to your body, you are painting a Turner sunset ON the body! That’s what watercolor tattoos are, simply tattoos with a soft, cloudy, faded-edge, and chromatic explosion of a watercolor painting.
Traditional tattoos have heavy black outlines and bold colors, whereas, watercolor tattoos are slightly more vague. They create the illusion of drips, runs, spills, and half-blended colors. Think of it as a portable exhibition of contemporary art, like having your own Kandinsky or Klee tattooed on your body!
Technical Sorcery of the Art
A tattoo artist needs technical mastery and near-religious artistic sensibility to create a watercolor tattoo. Beat the needles and conventional tattooing practices into your technique and watercolor tattooing is a pretty substantial departure from standard practices.
Technical Aspects:
Color Saturation Variation- Watercolor tattoos, eventually, are based on pigments, and, like traditional tattoos, brightness of colors, particularly concerning depth perception, is ultimately the goal, but watercolor tattoos use the techniques of intensifying opacity of the pigments to create depth perception or even opacity much like live watercolor paintings.
Minimal or No Black Outline- Traditional tattoos build the whole shape from black outline to a create a shape that will last and be more durable. Watercolor tattoos go either without black outlines, or with very minimal use, and use color to create a shape. This is a huge leap of faith, like walking on a tight rope without a safety net.
Color Gradation- the unique characteristic, aesthetic, that watercolor tattoos exhibit is in the beauty of color merging using gradients of color versus solid color breaks. This, also, requires extraordinary needle control and knowledge in color theory.
Drips and Splats- Purposeful accidents like drips, spatters, or splats simulate that imperfect warmth of watercolor painting. Controlled chaos is still skill and precision for the sake of ironies.
Negative Space- Some proficient watercolor tattoo artists will leave bare skin as part of their design, just as a watercolor artist will use the white of their paper to create light and depth.
Contextual History
While watercolor tattoos seem to be a modern trend, watercolor tattooing has been on a continuum of human body modification for a long time.
Throughout human history, we have transformed our bodies into artwork, as seen from the Egyptians with their decorative scarification, or from the Polynesian customs that gave us the word “tattoo” from the Tahitian tatau.
In part due to practicality, traditional tattooing developed with solid lines and color. Early tattoo pigments were basic, and tattoo methods were developed with longevity in mind. The watercolor tattoo style lacks the noble birth of the simple solid tattoos, and ever becoming possible until the inks, needles, and methodologies that we use today. It is a simple technology innovation allowing creativity in the future, as technology allowed the invention of synthetic pigment to take the outdoors of Impressionism, instead of being confined to the confines of their studio.
Thru line: The Nature of Beauty, and Longevity
Now we arrive at the whole enchilada, the question that causes tattoos to furrow their brows and purse their lips: Do watercolor tattoos last longer?
The answer is “depends” with a few paragraphs of a qualifying nature. Many of the better questions in life are not “yes or no”. In traditional tattooing, lines are very permanent (albeit imperfect). Most colors do not migrate with time but may slightly blur or fade. The line work design holds the structure of the tattoo.
Watercolor tattooing introduces some unique issues regarding longevity.
No Outlines to Hold and Contain: When the black lines, “outlines”, are not present in a watercolor tattoo, colors may spread more readily with time and will more easily look uneven (but really it becomes more difficult to see the tattoo).
Color Fade Rates Differ: Some colors will fade faster than others. As time passes the composition’s balance is sometimes altered, as reds and yellows are readily used in watercolor tattoos fade lighter faster than blues and greens.
Preservation of detail: Perhaps the first things to go in the unrelenting grip of time are the fine details and nuances of color that make watercolor tattoos so desirable and unique.
Variations in skin types: Everyone’s unique skin chemistry impacts faded tattoos a lot. Accurately predicting who will have fading tattoos is no science as lasers have translated into outcomes of vibrant tattooing for one person instead of another.
Let the fading described above be recognized as a part of the art and not a flaw of the tattoo. Watercolor tattoos should be considered a beautiful moment of time, allowed to change with the wearer, like the cherry blossom, allowed to be cherished because it is fleeting. Tattoos that flourish with us is art exceedingly poetic, it is artwork that reflects the brevity of everything.
Choosing an Artist: An Important Consideration
If you are considering a watercolor tattoo, artist choice is even more important than for the traditional style tattoo. This is not something just any tattoo artist wielding a needle and dreams should take on. You should only choose artists who specialize in the watercolor tattooing methods, most of their portfolios show how they have developed talents in this very complex style. Seek out artists who show:
Technical Precision: The tattoo design should exhibit skillful execution and appropriate layering of colors or ink, even without the use of black outlines.
Color Theory Knowledge: The artist should demonstrate knowledge of color theory in the creation of designs, in order to ensure the design has favorable aging.
Healed Examples: Both fresh and healed examples of their work should be available from any reputable watercolor tattoo artist. This tells you how well their tattoo lasts a number of years.
Customization: The best artists are able to tailor their process based on specific designs, areas of the body and client skin type, rather than having a standard process for everyone.
Education: Many excellent watercolor tattoo artists have formal art training, which they can carry into the tattoo world because they know how to utilize the paint properly.
Watercolor Tattoo Aftercare: Always Preserve the Masterpiece
All tattoos equally require thorough aftercare, but watercolor tattoos may require even more care. Colorful pigments often last longer if you take the following precautions:
Robust UV Protection: The biggest enemy of tattoo pigment are UV light that can affect the pigment, make fading, and degradation. You’ll want to be application of sunscreen with high SPF liberally.
Moisturizer: Well-hydrated skin worked as a much better painting surface for the longevity of the tattoo. Daily use of fragrance-free lotion will give your skin the most healthy state. Maintenance: Understand that watercolor tattoos will necessitate maintenance more than traditional tattoos, however if the relationship with the artist is strong this contributes to the maintenance.
Cultural Context of Watercolor Tattoos: Social Lens
Watercolor tattoos are recognizing and acknowledging change/transience just as their evolution denotes a significant cultural shift for change. Permanent tattoos, which suggest permanence, and lines/shapes were a success for a culture that valued integrity and invincibility.
In a digital filter world that is transient, watercolor tattoos are permanently ironic to recognize transience. Watercolor tattoos suggest to a generation that it is alright to recognize that art (and therefore life) is process of evolution and not completion, beauty does not require to be sustained permanent, and ultimately change is purely how we exist as humans.
Watercolor tattoos imply soft concepts and appeal in a way amounts to be lasting. Also invoke counter “school of thought” to the permanence of tattoos, the beauty that is reactive/proactive and ephemeral is so important beauty.
Whether these deigns are the blip or regretted downturn in tattoo art, or the newest best evolution is incidental to your person. Most importantly the only opportunity compliment watercolor tattoos create offer us styles, clients of tattoo art that offer us more ideas about exploring the dated customs of body art.
Whether it was your first tattoo, or fifteenth tattoo-watercolor tattoos will allow the fuel for piece of art to evolve over time; the fuel to have an act of art that lives an evolves with we live, notice in some of the peak, and declare its art-like-value. When people are more attached to things that are everlasting there’s little excitement with art that grows with time, are the eventually true makeup of beauty.
