Background is my favorite part of tattooing and of Japanese tattoos. I really love drawing it on, whether it’s wind and clouds or water and finger waves.

That’s what gives good Japanese tattoos their look. And it’s what gives a Japanese tattooer their look. How dark you do your bars. How thick or thin. How many you stack. Whether you outline them. All those choices are what makes a person’s style. Because with Japanese work, you’re doing a lot of the same imagery as everyone else. To do it right, it still has to look right. It takes a long time to master the flow so you can contort it without just making it look incorrect.

Especially early on, your background is what marks your work against everyone else’s. Just the choices you make. And the more experience you have with it, the more you can move it around.

With dragons you border their heads with clouds to give the lines space from the dark background so they don’t get chewed up over time. You can use background to enhance a tattoo, make it better over time. You can use it to create contrast and bright spots where they’re needed around detailed areas, so you don’t have too much ink packed into a small spot and that detail can survive.

Background is what gives your whole sleeve or back or bodysuit its real epic contrast from a distance.

We don’t generally put background around Japanese one-shot tattoos. The idea is to look at the body like a bodysuit. You wouldn’t just smush background around a single piece because you’d want to be able to butt wind bars or finger waves around it later.

But if the person already has an American traditional sleeve or something and there won’t be background behind it, you can put a little in. A cloud, a few finger waves. It helps the contrast of the design.