Tiger and lotus half sleeve with more to come, work in progress

So I got to finish up a clients half sleeve today.
We tattooed the tiger just before Christmas so it's all healed up and today added the lotus flower beneath. We're heading towards a full sleeve but this session finished off his half sleeve (upper arm).

You can see that the tiger is settled and the lotus and background looks a lot darker (with a red tint).
This is pretty normal for black and grey tattooing. When working in black and grey, which is black and dilutions or black to create a grey tone, tattooing the skin actually perforates it and the new tattoo looks darker as the grey dilutions of ink haven't settled in the skin yet. The reddish tint (although his skin didn't go too red) is from the irritation of the skin, almost like when you graze yourself. Once settled and the top skin layer grows back over the ink it should blend seamlessly with the tiger without looking like 2 pieces next to each other. Sometimes black and grey can almost look sepia when initially tattooed.
So next time you get a black and grey tattoo just remember, the new (fresh) tattoo generally tones down around 30% or so when healed and the red will subside.

We're moving towards a Tibetan style theme and added a Buddha head on the inside arm (which is also pretty red and dark at the moment). As we move towards the lower arm we'll blend the new pieces in (maybe a temple or something similar, we're still deciding). Oh and we have a coverup to contend with (you can see it in the lower part of his arm, we have some ideas on how to cover the old tattoo which will factor in to how we design for his lower arm.

I'll post more as it progresses, hope you found the blurb about how black and grey settles useful.

Peace Out