2.2) Positive / Negative Relationships
When we see a tattoo, especially from a distance or in low light, the first thing we notice is its silhouette. The silhouette is essentially the relationship of the tattoo’s dark areas against its lighter and untattooed areas, including the surrounding untattooed skin. A strong silhouette will clearly reveal the flow and fit of the design; it will also separate and give clarity to the various elements in the tattoo. In addition, it will give the piece strength not only from a distance, but also through decades of aging and settling. A clear silhouette is at least as crucial to the success of a tattoo as its flow and fit.
The silhouette is determined by the use of tattooed versus non-tattooed skin in the piece, the use of light versus dark tones, and the incorporation of a clearly readable flow with large, open areas of dark and light. Not only should the tattoo have a clear and pleasing relationship with the surrounding skin, but the elements within it should contrast each other as well so that they don’t run together and create an unreadable mess. We can avoid this problem by paying close attention to our positive/negative relationships.
We’ve already discussed negative space and its uses for introducing flow into a design that is otherwise not very fluid. Negative untattooed areas in a piece can play a strong role in how that piece reads. We’ll take this thinking process a step further by describing all dark-colored shapes and areas as positive, and light-colored ones as negative.
A positive/negative relationship is a relative description involving two adjoining shapes, such as the snail and background foliage depicted on this page. If the outer edges of the snail are darker than the background directly behind it, we say that the figure has a positive on negative relationship, or pos-on-neg (Fig. 27a). Likewise, if the outer edges of the same snail are lighter then the adjoining background, we’ll say that it has a negative on positive relationship, or neg-on-pos (Fig. 27b). However, if its adjoining edges are shaded dark over a dark background we’ll get a pos-on-pos relationship, which makes for a dark, dense and less readable tattoo (Fig. 27c). Similarly, a neg-on-neg relationship often will look weak and underdeveloped, detracting from the clarity of the piece (Fig. 27d). Even when contrasting colors are used in the foreground and background, it will be a denser tattoo if these colors are of similar darkness to each other along the edges where they meet.
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