Blue Wolf Tattoo

Black plus one colour is the reliable formula

Full-colour designs look best in photographs. Limited palettes look best in life, and there is a structural reason for it.

Black provides the outline and the contrast, so the design stays readable regardless of skin tone, lighting or distance. One accent colour then does the work of making it feel like a colour piece without asking any single hue to carry the composition.

Take the black away and every colour has to fight the skin tone underneath it. Add three more colours and they start competing with each other in an area smaller than a playing card.

It is why traditional tattooing settled on a handful of colours, and why comic art, printmaking and road signage all reached the same conclusion independently.

Small designs benefit most

At 5.3 by 9.5 cm there is very little room. A busy multicoloured design at this size becomes a blur at arm's length; a black design with one blue running through it stays crisp.

Where it fits

Small and upright, so it suits a wrist, an inner forearm, an ankle, a collarbone or behind the ear.

Inner surfaces are usually paler than outer ones, which gives a cool colour better contrast to work against.

See the wolf temporary tattoo range.

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