What’s the Deal With Watercolour?
This week we’re talking about a popular tattoo trend in the last few years, watercolour. Watercolour is a beautiful painting style that has transitioned into the tattoo world recently. Watercolour tattoos have soft fades, bright colours, ink drops/water splatter to make it look as if it was painted right onto the clients skin.
Watercolour can even be added to older tattoos to give them a new life by adding soft splashes of colour, but it doesn’t have to be an afterthought, there are many cool ways to use the effect of watercolour. This style can utilize blurring of colours, shading of course, or replicating the bleeding and running of watercolour paintings.
Some artists who do a lot of watercolour prefer to freehand the tattoo and create that water look as they go. While others make stencils with guides to follow where to start or saturate the colours. The tattooing is very similar to painting in this style because in both, the artist works from dark to light; in colours and saturation, to create that soft blended effect. We don’t have very many watercolour tattoos come in but checkout some that Loren and Roxie have done in the past:
This style’s popularity could be attributed to it’s striking appearance. Watercolours tattoos are bright and vivid. The nature of it is also very free and creates a certain flow within the tattoo. As well as opening up more design or creative options where watercolour is used to enhance an object or silhouette. There’s the added advantage with this style that if you’re not going to a custom shop, you’ll likely still get a unique watercolour tattoo because they are harder to duplicate and copy without the harsh lines.
However, some tattoo artists have some concerns about this up and coming style. This biggest concern artists have with this style is, will it age well? All tattoos fade and change as they age (See my post from a few weeks ago: how does ink work, and why does it fade for more info) but what’s unique about watercolour is the softness and lack of lines. Combining the soft colours with very little outlining means when they do start to fade you can lose the essence of the piece. Sometimes these soft colours fade faster and you could lose the watercolour portion of the tattoo or need more frequent touch ups to keep the piece looking bright. This is dependent on more factors such as how well your skin holds ink but the general concern is, will this style stay in the skin as well as something with an outline and heavy saturation.
It’s easy to see why this style has blown up over the past few years. The uniqueness of this style is certainly striking as are the colours and movement that it can accomplish. So don’t be dettered to search out a watercolour tattoo, but do your research and understand the risks (as you should do with any other tattoos).
Sources:
- Betts, Jennifer. “Watercolor Tattoos.” LoveToKnow, LoveToKnow Corp, tattoos.lovetoknow.com/tattoo-designs/watercolor-tattoos.
- Chronic. “Common Watercolour Tattoo Questions and Answers.” Chronic Ink, 7 June 2019, www.chronicinktattoo.com/blog/watercolour-tattoo-questions/.
