Alright before we lay these stencils, I want to talk just for a second about different options with stenciling.
I traditionally have just used soap and water to place stencils. Basically just
a thin coat of soap and water. I'll just kind of show you, I'll get Shawn to stick his arm out here.
Just a thin coat of soap and water and what I traditionally will do, can you get Shawn there, yep.
What I'll do is I'll put a decent amount on there about like so and then I kind of let it sit
for just a few seconds. If you were to wipe it and leave it just that wet and immediately place
the stencil on it, especially a stencil that has a lot of lines that are close together,
they'll bleed out pretty quickly and make it hard to to see. You won't get a very crisp line, so I
will traditionally let it let it sit for just a minute. I do put it on kind of thick but I'll
let it sit for a minute. I've tried the other way where I'll put it on real thin and then I end up
sometimes not getting the transfer, so I'd rather put it on a little thicker like make sure that the
the rag is actually wet. Put on a little thicker and give it you know 5 10 seconds and then place
it. Over the last few years things like I don't even know what this brand is I don't recommend
or non-recommend it. Stencil green, stencil stuff I know they're a handful of especially stencil
application things. There's actually some for laying markers on as well that you can draw on
with markers on the marker will hold. I've never bought it, this was sent to us for free as a sample
it works fine. I don't have a problem with it. It does tend to stay longer than green soap. So sometimes
when I'm doing wispy lines, if I want something to be grey washed I don't want a really hard line,
that stencil stays so dark for so long that I'm wiping and wiping and I can't really tell if my
grey line is where I want it or is consistent as I want it. So I kind of like something in-between,
I want the stencil to remain there long enough for me to get my lines in but I don't want it
there for three hours and I'm trying to wipe it off at the end of the tattoo and there's still
purple all over the arm. So it's kind of a balance. I'll tell you what I've been doing lately is if
I'm stenciling something like this typewriter, like we're doing today, that has a ton of stuff
and these are you know obviously I can't lose any of these lines they're important. So I'll
use the stencil stuff on that because I don't mind that I'll give up the easy wiping off in
exchange to make sure that my stencil is there because that thing has to be perfect. If you're
doing geometry things like that. I think this stuff is great. If you're doing something like
what the top part this tattoo will be which is a lot kind of wispier lines, a lot of flames
and things like that that can go away. I don't use this stuff generally well then I'll just use green soap.
The other thing I was going to mention people back when I first started tattooing used to use a
stick of deodorant all the time. That's a terrible idea, it's you've got little cross contamination
issues you know you think you haven't broken the skin but you can I mean you're shaving people you
can get little nicks and you start rubbing a stick of deodorant over one person and then rubbing that
same stick over the next person and it's a you've got real issues of cross contamination. So if you
have been doing that, I've seen people do it on YouTube a few times, don't do that.
Use soap and water at the very least or you know buy some of this stuff. All right.
Okay, I'm gonna place this stencil in in parts on Shawn here and I'm going to kind of walk through my mindset.
I'm gonna have nothing on the skin yet I'm gonna dry fit at first. I've already kind of checked it with
the line-drawing and make sure that my scale was right, but now I'm gonna know I'm going to dry fit
the actual stencil. We know we want it down on his forearm generally. See how he's holding his
arm out here. Generally I'll get people to relax their arm, sometimes people will want to tense and
it'll distort the stencil and something like this it's going to rap a lot anyways it wouldn't be the
end of the world if that happened but I just try to make it remind people to keep themselves kind
of loose. And then I think about where exactly I want it, we're gonna go about three quarters
with this piece. I kind of like I think it might look cool with the keys kind of wrapping
this muscle of his arm, that might be nice. But what I don't want is for this line at the top
of the typewriter to be flat across and kind of break that right there. So that's kind of what I
was fighting when I was looking at this earlier, like how do I want it to sit. I kind of want all
of this to sit below the ditch. I don't wanna have to do a ton of work in here and you'll see when we
place the next section that I've got some wispier stuff that pulls out of it. I'd rather that wispy
stuff sit in here rather than some really hard line, just because that's a that's a tough area
to get tattooed it's also an area that tends to not stay as crisp. So there's kind of what
I'm thinking right now, thinking we'll set it about like so kind of what the point of this thing
drop straight down the inside of his arm as it rolls around. Those keys might look kind of
cool like that and we'll have stuff that pulls out from here anyways and then that keeps
it low enough that I can pull this other stuff up and out. So more of it is actually going to sit
on his bicep than I intended, I really originally thought I might do it further back like this but I
think I'm gonna go in so that's gonna put more on his bicep. I thought more was going to go back up
this way that's alright I'll be able to draw to change that. I always keep that stuff in mind,
I try not to get too strict of an idea set in my head because whenever I start placing it on
people pretty often I'll find that I did if I limit my placement on the front end that I end
up with with not the best design. So I'm gonna place that uh the stencil stuff now which I'm
going to use on this. I don't know if your suppose to shake it. I does looks like you should shake it, alright.
With this stuff I don't really use a rag, I just squirt a little on my hand.
And I feel like I can feel it a little better and I make sure to get an area that's much larger than what and
what I know I'm gonna go on. I just it's kind of like if you've ever if you're a painter at
all, if you've ever tried to start the day with a little liquid or something to on a section of
canvas. If you slap it on with your brush you can't really tell how much you have on there
but if you kind of feel it out with your hands like that. You can see you can kind of feel the
whatever viscosity or whatever kind of the just how much you have on there if there's any got
up areas you can feel it a lot easier. So that's what I'm doing now alright so I'm just going to,
relax your arm, pump it out just a little X there. I'm going to take a stab at it.
So what I usually do is on places straight down the center and then fold out from there. To me
the most important thing to get right of these keys so I may end up with a couple of little folds.
But I don't want it to happen in these keys so I'm gonna get those down, if I ended up
with a fold or something in this I can draw it corrected a lot easier than I can correct 400
keys. Or how, that's how many keys are on a keyboard right? yeah, you know, 400 letters on alphabet.
That's what I thought, 400 letters in the alphabet.
So see, I've got a few little crinkles right there but that's not the end of the world. I can straighten those lines out.
These were my concern, I didn't want those guys getting all crinkled so look around make sure you got it all. Here's a
good see how thick that is I left it a little too thick and that's blowing out so you don't want that.
What you really want it to look like is more like this just when you can kind of see the skin coming through it.
That should be a good stencil right there, most of this looks
good you know some of this stuff looks like it got a little thick but it's not the end of the
world you know because I'm a professional and everything.
All right let's see what we got.
Sometimes this stuffs trying to peel back off.
I should be wearing glove on this hand but I'm not, I know Shawn really well we've slept together.
It's true.
All right see so that's stencils nice and clean, just like I thought it would be.
Some of that's broken up, it's fine I can fix that. As a matter of fact a lot of that's going
away but you'll see when I lay the next part of the stencil that we have some stuff that breaks
in front of this. This is my concern, what are those keys look like pretty sweet there's that
little area they got a little bit thick and you can see if you had an entire stencil of that just
that little kind of white purple it just kind of blurs the edges and if you had that all the
way through that could be a mess. So there you go I kind of like the way that sits. Before we
go any further we'll make sure he likes the way it says I like you know kind of the point right there
and this is this is we didn't talk about this is a Kurt Vonnegut piece, a Slaughterhouse-Five piece.
So this is Vonnegut's typewriter and it's kind of a baby blue and obviously Shawn is kind of tan
which is why it's cool boy Shawn. So I am going to end up going lower than this because what I don't
want is baby blue against tan skin, it's not going to be a nice dynamic finish. So I'll drop a shadow
or I'll drop something below it. It's going to be nice and strong contrast to pop this out so
I'm keeping that in mind as well you know and I may even you know pull something up in front of it.
I'm not really sure I'll start drawing a little bit to make that decision but okay part one down.
One thing I'll do sometimes when I'm rapping like a bicep or something like that
it's something that's organic that I depending on being really structured like that, I like these
little relief cuts in it because sometimes you'll end up it'll help you avoid crinkles
they'll just kind of fold over each other. Just a little tip. Alright relax, right here.
Same thing, I'm just going to go straight up here.
We're about to find out.
Let's turn them up.
I can already tell that I do but since it's already on your places let's see.
That's a little further in then, I want. I really want to see this sitting more like so instead of in here
so I've kind of decided first I thought this building was really going to sit out here when
I first started drawing for it, you can kind of see that it was designed to that space. But I
really the typewriter is important to me I wanted to sit this way so so I'm fine with
I'm fine with the slaughterhouse sitting right here on the center of his bicep but I think it
needs to be a focal point. What we don't want is for it to sit completely to be inside. Agreed?
yeah yeah. Okay we're going to do that again here's a good opportunity to show removing
stencils. I'm using green soap to get the most of it off I'll get it light with green soap,
sometimes I like to leave a little bit of the old stencil through there when I'm trying to
find my placement because it'll it gives me a guide because I know that's too far in.
So the next time I'm weighing I can kind of do this and look at it and weigh it over because
I can see where the old one set. I don't want it this dark because it will compete with my
new steps open be very confusing. So I'm gonna get as much as I can with this and then
I'm in with the alcohol. Alcohol will get it light enough just takes a little work.
I mean if you had got it right the first time. Yeah, if I got it right the first time then
we wouldn't have this tutorial. I also really like to get the arm as irritated as I can
so it's just ready to spew blood.
All right let's try this again. So looking for my old tattoo, I might have got rid of too much of it.
But I see this thing see that that so I'll use it to guide
myself. I was trying to line it the bottom of this to the top of the typewriter. That's
not really that important I mean this is just flames in paper I can draw that in,
so it's more important that. This thing's this will want it to so that's what I'm worried about.
All right down the center.
You can see where those relief cuts kind of come in handy you know I would have gotten a
crinkle or a pull they'll separate a little and it's simple just to draw that stuff back in.
All right and so anytime you're concerned like see that's not really pressing down on there just
take your cloth and just bump it. You don't have to go overboard with it, bump it until it coming
feels like it's taken like a temporary tattoo which is most of what I make.
All right this text is kind of important so I'll make sure it's in there.
I feel pretty good about that.
Big reveal.
I'm much happier with where that's sitting now the only thing it really affected at
all was down through here and that's not a big deal, I mean I can draw it's a piece of paper
I can even pull a flame up or something. I really wanted the paper to cut all the
way to this side but when you're working with something that's in the round like
this he can't little little things like that dictate decisions you know. You can draw and
make those changes but I really wanted to make sure is that this thing flow the way
I wanted to and I actually like that. I mean because if you think about drawing to the body
that tricep and the way the planes go and I can make little tweaks and make those things pull up