Hi, I am new here! I have been tattooing since januari, till now I made just minimalistic tattoos, sketching and others without planty full black places in there. Now I am making large tribal and struggling with some no full black places after healing. The customer don't see it, but me wel and it is really frustrating. I am after second session, first time made outlines with 14RS and filling with 13SEM. This time did all with 14RS and was much better, but still no perfect... During tattooing seemed that skin was 100% black (I checked it really properly stretching nice skin under good lamp) but anyway after healing unfortunately I found some 80-90% black places. Is it common among more advanced tattoo artists that after big black-outs, touch up is almost always required? Maybe just this customer is difficult? 55 years old man, his skin is really hard, dry and thick. What more, he is really hairy, and his hairs are like on the face. Hard and thick, I razored him as good as I could, but I could still notice this in skin. In some places the needle just was blocking through these hard hairs in the skin. Even during slow lining, RS14 9V. Do you have any experience with this? I had to just dotting him in these areas... Second thing, first time was making longer tattoo than 2 hours. After 2,5h, some places didn't want to keep the ink. (I thought the needle was guilty, checked the edge, even changed it for new one, but stil nothing, than thought that the ink a bit dried out and was too thick so added 1 drop of water to the ink, but still no result) Is there any solution for this or just tiredness and need to finishing session?)
Thanks in advance for you help
Glad to hear from you!
I believe as you are very new to tattooing, you are in the learning phase, so even if you think that the black was properly filled and later it went empty, that is because you still can't read your work properly and that comes with. experience. However most of the artists to touch-ups later on as there are so many other reasons for colour loss which are not in control of the artist and his techniques, so its normal.
2.5 Hour session is a small session, long sessions are 6 hours plus. You should nat have any difficulty in such a small session. Every inch of any body part is different, and so the hand-movement, stroke-length, needle-depth, machine speed, ink dilution, one of the above or all needs to be considered when you feel that the ink is not flowing smoothly as before. Every skin is different and so there has to be always a subtle change in the way you work, do not treat all skins as one, you have to learn from the given skin about what works and what not.
Important! - Lining and colour-packing are two different techniques and so it requires 2 variations of machine settings. For colour packing / filling you need the machine to run slow, around 7V to 8V, that is the CPS should be around 90 to 110 while you have a good long stroke of around 4mm. While for lining you can use same stroke length but run the machine fast upto 9V to 10V, that is the CPS of around 130CPS. This should mostly take care of your problems.
Let me know if this was helpful
Cheers,
Sunny
Not that my opinion is worth more than two cents. Here’s my two cents. Slow your hand movement and machine down. Also remove all clocks you are not in a race. Once you find your rhythm you will get lost and besuprsed surprised at how fast it goes. Also once the skin is overworked,overheated ,or over traumatizes it will reject the ink . and everything sunny said.
Your suggestion is worth millions mate, its about your effort and time you put in to write this, thank you for sharing your opinion.
That‘s really helpful. It could be the reason. Next session I will use all your tips. I’m thinking that slower movement and smaller voltage can be a solution. I let you know after next color packing. Thanks
Do upload the photo here, let us see the progress :)
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I did a full back tribal tattoo and i learnd two very important things. One, dont do lineas, go straight to the color packing. And two, dont trust your eyes, trust technique, and that is going skow and making very smal circles as you rpgress forward. You will see it takes longer but at the end its worth it. I took 12 hrs doing that tatt, hope it help´s.