Not every tattoo is the same. That's the point of tattoos, as any skin art aficionado will affirm. It's not a simple divide: the tattoo is an ancient art form, which has spawned many variants over the centuries. That means whole different "schools" of tattooing, each with their own look and pictorial language. Tattoos aren't simply different pictures - they are individual statements in whole different languages, with particular inks suitable for (even demanded by) particular dialects. There are as many types of tattoo pigments as there are tattoo languages - to do any tattoo right, the proper colours have to be taken into consideration.
Take two simple examples, both of which should be pretty common to the knowledge of the average Westerner. On the one hand, we have nautical style tattoos - a catchall term that includes naval service tattoos, pirate inspired tattoos, and the Caribbean tattoo look pioneered by returning US servicemen in the early part of the 20th century. On the other, you've got the South American tattoo style - characterized by its repeated images of skulls and brightly coloured plants. Different tattoo pigments suit the two styles in different ways: which means choosing, and using, different inks to get the required effects.
The nautical type tattoo was first popularized in the West thanks to the return of naval service personnel who had been introduced to the art in the West Indies and the Orient. Typically, nautical tattooing contains recurrent images and phrases, which have actually been associated with genuine "sea dog" tattoos for centuries: a swallow (for a safe return home) and an anchor (for safe ports in stormy seas). The tattoo pigments used here are mostly water colours (blue, green and yellow), and red for the heart that often features in the imagery. To get these tattoos done correctly a person needs to use the pigments associated with the West Coast tattoo parlours from whence the images first came. Anyone looking to retrace this ink language back to its roots, and get the proper Oriental seafarer's tattoo, will require a different set of inks again - something paler, more akin to the Japanese silk pictures one sees painted on screens and plates.
South American tattoo imagery has much more to do with the land than the sea. The recurring images here are skulls and bones (signifiers of mortality, in much the same way as the Elizabethan memento mori); and flowering plants (signifying life in the face of death). The tattoo pigments used for this currently fashionable form of skin art are much brighter and more diverse than the colours one finds in the seafaring tattoo: rich reds, pinks, oranges and yellows; vibrant greens; even mescal-tinted blues and purples. South American style tattoos are louder, more ornate, brighter than their naval counterparts - taking their colours and their themes from the sun baked, cactus crowded land of mesa and tequila. As a result they require much stronger, more intense tattoo pigments: otherwise the images look wrong.
There's a lot more to the art of skin than simple drawing and filling. These colours are a language all of their own. Anyone looking for the genuine article need only ask his or her tattooist about the inks they intend to use: the answer will reveal everything the prospective human canvas needs to know.
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