00:00Tattooing color on darker skin is not something that everybody learns.
00:05The more we educate ourselves about working with all skin tones, the better we can serve our clients.
00:12Hi, I'm Horeja. I'm a journalist and graduate student based in New York City.
00:16And today I'm getting a color tattoo.
00:18I am extremely excited to get this color tattoo.
00:22It's honestly not something that I ever saw happening in my lifetime.
00:26I think there's often this idea that color tattoos on black people, particularly on dark skin, won't age well or
00:35just can't be done well.
00:37I know that it's possible, but it seems like sometimes it can be daunting to find someone who can actually
00:43do it right.
00:44As a black woman, I find that I'm often told how my body should look, how I should dress, how
00:51I should act.
00:52And for me, this is a way of taking control of my body and decorating it and celebrating it.
00:59I'm Sophie Selevy. I'm a tattooer.
01:01And I work out of a private studio that I co-own called This Time Tomorrow in Brooklyn, New York.
01:07I do both color and black and gray tattoos.
01:10And I primarily work in the themes relating to the natural world, a lot of botanicals, the cosmos, astrology.
01:18I created Tinted, which is a workshop for tattooers that focuses on color pigment within more melanated skin.
01:26Today I'm going to be tattooing Horeja.
01:28We did settle on a floral piece.
01:31I haven't seen the sketch yet, but I'm really excited to see what it looks like.
01:37I love it. I really like how the petals look like they're in motion. This is gorgeous.
01:43Okay, so now I'm going to make a stencil of this.
01:46Once I have the stencil, we'll place it and make sure that it's perfect and how you want it to
01:50be.
01:51And then we'll go from there. Okay?
01:52Sounds good.
01:53Awesome.
01:53Awesome.
01:54I'm a little insecure about getting it on my inner arm.
01:57I have some stretch marks, but in conversation with Sophie, you know, she told me that why not turn your
02:05insecurities into your strengths?
02:08I'm a little bit nervous about the pain just because I know that it's going to be a session that's
02:14going to be a couple of hours long.
02:16I don't have the highest pain tolerance, but I think that the end result will be worth it.
02:32Today I'm anticipating about two hours or so for the tattoo based on the size of the design.
02:45I'm going to be using maybe about three or four different needles of different groupings and a shader to create
02:53her piece for her.
03:00I got my start in tattooing through an apprenticeship at a shop called City of Ink in Atlanta, Georgia.
03:06I feel very lucky in my apprenticeship because the focus of tattoos was not measured at the standard of white
03:15skin because I learned in a shop that was black owned and our clientele was mostly more melanated.
03:24I think one of the things that is really important when working with color pigment and more melanated clients is
03:33that you want to take your time with the process.
03:50There are a lot of myths that circle around tattooing color on darker skin tones.
03:57Some of them include having to tattoo harder to get the color to show more which is incorrect or that
04:05it's just not possible or that the color won't last.
04:09None of these things are accurate.
04:14None of these things are accurate.
04:17With everything that happened during the BLM protests of 2020, I really felt the need to contribute in some way
04:26or form but I wanted to contribute in a way that felt authentic to me.
04:30And I felt like being able to offer something for the tattoo community and for marginalized clients felt like something
04:40that I could actually do and something that I could do in a way that felt hands on.
04:46It was important to me to be able to do something to contribute to helping to create that conversation that
04:55hasn't been happening.
04:59I think just having more educational resources out there to help tattooers with tattooing color on darker skin tones is
05:08very important because there's a lot of nuance in between it can happen and it can't happen.
05:15Without the conversation happening, we can't explore any of that in between.
05:24You can take your time and get up and you can check it out in the mirror.
05:28All right.
05:30This is so pretty.
05:32I don't even know what to say.
05:34I'm in awe right now.
05:36I didn't think that this was something that could be done on my skin but it's done.
05:40I think the tattoo came out stunning.
05:43I never really imagined myself getting a color tattoo, but even though I just got it, I can't really imagine
05:48myself without it.
05:49I think that the experience went really well.
05:52It, of course, wasn't painless, but I think Sophie went out of her way to make sure that I was
05:57as comfortable as I could possibly be.
05:59I think the tattoo session went great.
06:01Horigius sat awesome.
06:03We talked throughout the whole session and I think that she was really happy with how the tattoo came out.
06:09After the first session, it's really important to me to have clients come back for a follow-up session so
06:15I can see how these colors are settling in and to see if maybe I want to add more layers
06:21or if there's anything that healed a little bit off that I might be concerned about.
06:26Or just kind of see how the tattoo is settling in and if there's anything else that I need to
06:32do to it.
06:33There's no way that a tattoo is going to look the same across the board on all of these different
06:39skin tones.
06:40But that does not mean that a tattoo will not be beautiful across all of these skin tones.
06:46We're all different.
06:47Tattoos are going to look different and that's totally fine.
06:50It really has, you know, confirmed to me that black people, dark-skinned people can get colored tattoos and have
06:58them come out beautiful.
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