Black and grey tattoos

Without colour to lean on, everything rests on the linework and the shading. A black and grey piece has to be built with enough contrast that it still reads from across a room, and enough restraint in the mid-tones that it does not go muddy as it settles into the skin over the years.

It also ages more forgivingly than colour does. Blacks and greys hold their shape as the skin changes, where some colours soften and shift. For a sleeve or a backpiece — work meant to be looked at for decades — that matters more than it might seem on the day.

Plenty of what looks black and grey here carries one deliberate red: a tongue, a length of lightning, a scrap of cloth. One colour in an otherwise black and grey piece does more work than a full palette would.