Why I Chose Black & Grey
Every artist ends up somewhere. The style they work in, the subjects they return to, the aesthetic they've built their practice around - none of it is accidental, even when it doesn't feel like a deliberate decision at the time.
For me, that somewhere is black and grey. And the path to it started long before I picked up a tattoo machine.
It Started With a Pencil
I've written elsewhere about copying pictures out of National Geographic as a kid - spending hours trying to capture what I saw on the page. Texture. Depth. The way light fell across a surface and made it feel real.
That obsession wasn't about drawing in the abstract sense. It was about replication - about making something on paper feel like the thing it depicted. Could I make this fur look like fur? Could I make this shadow feel like it was actually receding?
I've always been drawn less to colour and more to mood. Less to the surface of things and more to the weight of them.
Black and grey tattooing is the same challenge I was chasing as a kid, in a different medium. When I encountered the style seriously, it felt like the natural continuation of something I'd been doing my whole life. The pencil work, the graphite studies, the obsession with rendering form through value rather than colour. Black and grey wasn't a departure. It was the destination.
What Kept Pulling Me Back
What kept pulling me back was the constraint of it. With black and grey, everything lives or dies on value. Depth, texture, atmosphere, dimension - all of it has to be built through tone alone. I found that challenge endlessly interesting.
The subjects changed over time. The fascination with light, shadow, and atmosphere didn't.
Dark Realism Specifically
Within black and grey, dark realism is where I spend most of my time. That's also not accidental.
Dark realism operates in shadow. The subjects - skulls, dark organic forms, atmospheric compositions, gothic imagery - are lit dramatically, often from a single strong source, with significant areas of deep shadow and moments of sharp highlight. The emotional register is specific: weight, atmosphere, presence.
What draws me to it is that it asks for more than technical accuracy. A skull rendered correctly is a good tattoo. A skull that feels heavy, dark, and present - that creates a mood rather than just depicting a subject - is something else. That gap is what dark realism is trying to close. It's the gap I find most interesting to work in.
What It Demands
I don't think you can do this style well without caring about it specifically.
Black and grey realism - dark realism especially - is unforgiving of shortcuts. There's nowhere to hide. The work either has depth and dimension or it doesn't. The atmosphere either lands or it doesn't.
That unforgiving quality is part of what keeps me interested after sixteen years. The standard is clear. The gap between where I am and where the work could be is always visible. There's always something to improve, something to push further, something to solve that I haven't solved before.
That's why I'm still doing it. Not because I've mastered it - but because I haven't.
Interested in black & grey realism?
Get in touch…
