7/14/12

Today was awesome!  This guy had his name on his back, and added a random dear head in the center of his back.  He has plans to put scenery around the buck, but didn't think it made much sense that his name was floating above it.  I suggested puting a banner around it to set it apart from everything else.

Then I did this honey badger... he don't care!.  That's my B&G set up on the left.  Left to right, dark to light always.  One cup is solid black, the next is half full, then one where the bottom of the cup is covered and one with one drip of black, topped off with water.  Oh, and of course white.  The blood is the location where I set my pinky to rest my hand on the tray when I dip for ink.

Canadian pride...I don't get it.  (JK)

When I do a gradient from black to another color I fill an area with solid black and whip it out into the area where I'm going to put color.  I don't rinse my needle I just dip in color because there's enough black left to tint the ink in my tube, but not the cup.  As I work my way away from the black the ink gets (in this case) redder.  If I was smarter I wouldn't have given the black such a hard edge when I filled it in, that way I could have worked more red into the black area, resulting in a smoother gradient, without over working the skin.

Lips.  This is done in pink ink, it would have looked better in a darker color, like red.  Oh well.  He likes it.


One cool trick I learned this week is to drag the working area of the skin away from bones when tattooing.  I was working on a color bone and I have a tendency to pull towards my left hand when stretching the skin.  The customer actually asked me if I could pull down instead, by doing this I was able to move the whole tattoo away form the bone, which, I'm sure, greatly increased his endurance, allowing me to tattoo longer, have more fun and make more money!  I'll be focusing on that whenever it's an option from now on.

Before and after pics of a cover-up I did
a few weeks ago, I didn't have
my camera that day.