Black And Grey Tattoo Designs

Black And Grey Tattoo Designs are generally believed to have originated within prison systems, where inmates had no access to colored ink. The technique was brought to mainstream tattoo shops by Jack Rudy and his mentor, Charlie Cartwright. They perfected a single-needle tattoo machine to produce highly realistic shading in their tattoo designs. This technique works well for portraiture.
Black And Grey Tattoo Designs techniques are often employed for a variety of tattoos. Japanese irezumi, such as the rising koi, are traditionally done using black-and-gray, although colored irezumi sometimes use black-and-gray backgrounds in a manner similar to sumi-e brushwork. Classic Chicano tattoos — which include a broad range of imagery such as icons in Catholicism or the Mexican flag and partially originated from prison life — are also normally done in black-and-gray. Photo-realistic portraits are also commonly done in black-and-gray, and typically resist deterioration better than color portraits.
In some color tattoos, artists can use black-and-gray initially to provide a foundation for the subsequent shading using colors. The colored ink can be added directly above the black-and-gray portions of the tattoo.
Black And Grey Tattoo Designs is sometimes referred to as "jailhouse" or "joint style" and is thought to have originated in prisons where inmates had limited access to different materials; they resorted to using guitar strings for needles and used cigarette ashes or pen ink to produce tattoos. Inmates would construct makeshift tattoo machines that were powered using the small motors available in tape players. Prisons generally prohibit inmates from tattooing, so these were likely to be done in secret. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, jailhouse then became popularized in tattoo parlors outside of prison and was renamed "black and gray". Black-and-gray is also thought to have originated from the Chicano or cholo culture in Los Angeles.