Hey, this is Jake with the Tattoo Improvement Network
welcoming you to another episode of Fireside Technique.
I'm going to start this episode off with a question.
If I were to give you, say, like an 8B pencil,
a really a pencil is capable of being very dark, nearly black.
And I asked you to render
an apple in grayscale
could you do it, or would it have to be all black in paper tone?
Of course you could do it.
You could vary the pressure
and get all sorts of grays right.
So that's going to be my first point in black
shading for color tattoos,
we talk a lot about gray shading.
Whenever I'm approaching or whenever I'm doing black shading
or shading for color tattoos, I'm really only using black.
Very rarely am I dipping into grays.
I'm varying my pressure and I'm getting some grays,
but I'm not using a lot of gray, gray washes.
And I'll get into the why as we move on through this.
So so this is a larger tattoo, and this is typically when I use black
shading instead of instead of just going directly into color,
if I were doing a one sitting or one shot tattoo,
I'd probably do all this kind of at the same time.
I would start building some blacks and then I would build color
right off of those blacks.
But when I'm thinking about large pieces and this is a full sleeve that I'm working
on right here,
I'm really
thinking more abstractly and from a compositional standpoint,
at this phase, I'm trying to think of where my large masses of dark are
and where my large masses of light are.
Also, I am not really concerned
with getting a full saturation of these blacks,
if you'll notice the way that I'm moving the machine and
and look closely at the ink as it's going in.
It's not really that saturated.
And the reason being is I know that I'm going to come back and lay
color directly on a lot of this, and I'm going to be able to tint it either
warmer or cooler, depending on what I need for that part of the tattoo.
So basically what I'm thinking of at
this phase is where is my light coming from?
What is the form that I'm trying to describe
and where would the light be hitting it?
I if you
look right here, I'm kind of it looks like I'm kind of sketching off to the side.
I'm starting to describe that form.
This is kind of a
this is like a meteor or an asteroid that Supergirl is sitting on here and it's
being lit from the bottom with a fiery kind of explosion from the bottom.
So in order for that fiery explosion at the bottom
to read as bright
and full of light, I need some strong contrast in that area.
So to serve that purpose, this asteroid is going to be fairly dark.
And you can see that I'm kind of making those decisions now.
I'm thinking about what the asteroid actually looks like.
It's kind of jagged,
and I'm not trying to overly render it.
I'm really just going from dark to skin tone.
The reason being, if I were to start to render with medium grays
over and into my light areas
when I went to lay color in to those areas, I'm going to muddy it up.
It's going to end up a little murky.
And nowadays there are so many color choices
that you have all of these rich, muted tones.
You don't really need to have a gray lying underneath those tones.
If you need, say, a a muted midtone blue well they make one.
And if you don't want to use a premixed one,
you can take a blue and dip it into a little bit of orange and kind of
and mute it down in a much more
much cleaner way
than just laying a gray wash under it and then laying a blue on top of it.
It's always going to look a little murky that way.
You're served a lot better by using by mixing a color
with it's complementary or in with another color
and creating those off hues rather than just laying it directly over gray
okay now down in this area.
This is where my light is coming from.
You see how I'm kind of whipping right here, kind of whipping the machine around
I don't want that quite as dark as I want some of these areas
further up in the asteroid.
So I'm kind of I'm varying my pressure
a little bit staying a little bit lighter
and in just enough to describe the form,
just going in enough to describe the form
here is you can kind of see, you know, it's not super clean.
It's really kind of peppery.
It's a little sketchy.
It looks like someone that doesn't know what they're doing is putting a tattoo in.
But that's all right. It's really an underpainting.
I'm thinking of this as an underpainting. First,
I know that I'm going to build directly on top of it when it heals
and I'm going to blend, I'm going to fully saturate those darks
and where the transitions take place, where the form turns, where those edges
come in, I'm going to saturate those edges
with different,
different colors, different values that turn the form
the way that I want it to be turned.
So right now, I'm just trying to describe
the most basic shape
if you look right
here, I'm starting to define or I'm starting to
just soften edges a little bit while I do just want to define the basic shape.
I don't want those blacks to come to a really abrupt halt
where they look like a line, at least not everywhere.
There are some areas that that may happen, but also I'll kind of lighten up
my pressure just a little bit and I'll kind of whip through
and just enough to kind of soften the edge of where that form turns.
Not too much, just enough
Another example of how I just slowly
am building this this up with with light passes.
I don't want it to get too dark.
I just want to kind of describe the form.
I want to get it in and obviously as quickly as possible.
I don't want to sit and make pass after pass, but I do have a few.
If you're paying attention to the skin, you'll notice
that you can bump back through areas here and there
you just kind of have to learn to read the skin and make sure
that you're not overworking it in any way.
I usually wouldn't go into details like this little
these little pops that I'm working on right there, they're like little rocks
or something like that.
But my gray wash lines were so light and there weren't enough of them.
So Im kind of inventing some of these little guys as we go.
And so they'll like I said, normally I wouldn't go quite this far
with rendering in these in these early phases.
Now I am kind of bumping against some edges and trying to sharpen up, you know,
I want that little streak of light to be nice and crisp and clean.
So I am going in with a smaller mag that's probably a five mag right there
and just kind of defining an edge
so that I'll have a fairly clean edge to come back against with a light tone.
And that's not to say that I can't come back with a liner.
Most likely I will at the end of the tattoo
and push those edges super crisp just where I want them.
But I would rather start more general and then work up to those crisp
edges.This is kind of fun because it almost gives you an excuse
to be like a scratcher or like you feel like you're working out of your kitchen.
You know, here
you're you're
sketching, you're kind of blocking in stuff
kind of roughly and crudely
and you know, it's like drawing a picture.
It's not like you're really trying to get these perfectly smooth blends or render
perfectly or get this grey to fall seamlessly into this grey.
You're really just trying to describe the most basic forms and get them in there
with enough information that when they heal,
you know what you're looking for and you know what to do on top of them.
Now, as we move up in this tattoo, you'll notice that these areas that I've started
to started shading up in this figure in the background are a little lighter
and the reason is
he is although he's a large figure, he is sitting in the background.
He's sitting behind that asteroid.
So since I have some fairly
saturated darks in that asteroid and it's in the immediate foreground,
I don't want my background figure to get as dark as that.
If he is as dark, he's
going to want to jump forward and compete with that foreground asteroid.
I want him to be a little softer, a little more in the background.
Another reason
that I'm keeping him a little lighter is that in planning this sleeve,
I know that I'm dealing with a tribal cover up at the top of his arm.
So there's an area of dark there's going to have to be pretty deep
and saturated at the at the top of his arm,
which is why I made the asteroid at the bottom
of his arm dark so that I've almost bookended the piece with darks.
And then this figure in the middle of this bizarro Superman that's in the middle
will be light.
So he'll and he's also oversize.
So he'll be kind of a focal point.
He's kind of what I want you to see when you first look at the piece,
because he's going to be the large light shape in the center.
Now, I do have to give him enough value to, you know, to describe the form,
but I don't want him to end up too dark.
Now, you know, it looks a little sketchy right now, but keep in mind,
this is still straight black.
So if you look at the you know, say the
the stuff that I'm working on right there, like the underside of his leg
and you compare it to the darks in the asteroid below it,
it's probably three or four shades lighter at least.
And it's not because I move to a gray.
It's because I changed my technique
I'm just scraping the skin.
I'm moving a little quicker.
I'm I'm kind of getting through an area
and moving away and letting it settle and then seeing how
how smooth my my transitions are.
And like I said, I'm not worried with them being completely smooth.
I don't want them to look raked are really, you know, inconsistent
because that's going to make it more difficult on me
whenever I go to lay my solid color in on top of it.
So I want as much consistency as I can get,
but I'm not going to sit there and make tiny little circles
and get a perfect medium gray. Just
it doesn't matter It would be a waste of my time and the client's money.
I can get it
just as saturated and just as smooth as I need with these kind of brush marks.
Which brings me to another point
Learn to make your machine work for you if you're constantly having
to change the way that you move your hands
to satisfy the machine,
you'll you'll struggle with these kinds of things indefinitely.
So if your machine isn't working the way that you like to work,
change machines, learn to tune the thing, send it off to someone, get in contact
with a builder that can build something that is willing to work work with you and
and get it tuned to to run the way that you'd like for it to run.
I see so many people that draw a certain way and end up having to tattoo or end up
tattooing a completely different way because they're a slave to their machine.
And it just shouldn't be that way.
If the machine isn't operating the way that you naturally make marks,
then correct the machine don't change your marks.
Alright, still just kind of blocking in these very
basic shapes.
I'm trying to describe where my light is, where my lights coming from.
These gray lines that are laid in on this guy.
I had to line this entire sleeve at once.
I ended up gray lining the entire thing.
I've kind of gotten away from that as much as I can.
I like to just shade those gray lines, still kind of come through
from time to time.
So here we go.
So just kind of
scraped in marks, gets a little more saturated.
None of it is fully saturated.
Just thinking basic shapes,
lights and darks and not a lot of mediums.
And that's it.
That'll heal up.
And I will
come back next time and lay color on top of it.
I hope that helps. Thank you, guys.