Partial Colour

Partial colour keeps the piece in black and grey and lets colour fall only where it is needed. Unlike full colour, the coloured area is decided in advance, which makes it a good fit when there is one thing you want to draw the eye to. At Studio Goun it is most often used on part of a flower or a symbol.

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• More colour is not better colour. Half the work is deciding where colour will not go.

• So the first question at consultation is simple: in this design, where should the eye land first?

• Put colour there alone and the surrounding black and grey steps back like a background, and the contrast does the rest.

• A single petal, one ribbon, one iris — small areas tend to carry the most effect.

• One piece done this way is the butterfly covering a scar, the only coloured photograph in the gallery.

• It adds a stage, so it takes longer: the black work is finished first, then colour is laid over it and the boundaries cleaned up.

• Colour also softens more readily than black over the years. That is said plainly at the first consultation.

• Sunlight fades it fastest. Once healed, sunscreen before going out does more for a coloured tattoo than anything else.

• The same ink reads differently on different skin tones, and that is taken into account when the colours are chosen.

• Worked in a private studio in Hongdae, strictly by appointment. Where colour goes is settled at the design stage.