Shell Moreno explains the colour pallet and theory used for this incredible Samurai tattoo.
“Work simple and smart” is Shell’s motto!
With this in mind Shell designed a black and grey Samurai with just 1 colour base!
Shell explains by the time I finished my design the hint of colour became almost fifty percent of the whole design.
Making the mask red but keeping the samurai in black and grey helped create a “pop effect”.
I wanted to add some texture to the surface of the mask for extra detail. To keep things simple I chose only three tones of red to use on this project.
World Famous Ink Red tones are my favourites. In this case the darkest tone “Dracula Red” was used to do the shadows, and the lightest tone that I picked was “Red Hot” to do the mask colour base. The last one “Red Square” I used to blend the two colours and create a smooth gradient.
My technique was very simple, I filled up the whole mask with the light tone first, then I added the dark tone to create shadows. Lastly the medium tone to blend it all together.
I used my Greywash tones to add simple shading. I created big contrast with the black and Grey areas, using more solid black and medium greywash tones. I only used the dark and Light greywash tones where necessary, this way my black and Grey work was very clean and soft enough to give space for the mask to stand out.
I recommend doing all the black and grey work first and leave any colour until last where possible.