Background Shading

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When I first made a double–stacked mag in May 2000, nobody believed I actually used them, but they worked good and people said they hurt less than a regular mag. I use 14's (two 7 needle mags) 18's (two 9 needle mags) and 22's (two 11 needle mags). I find the stacked mags work a lot like a regular mag, in terms of hand motion. It is a little hard to see the bottom right corner needle because there is another level of needles up on top of it. Trying to hold the tube perpendicular to the skin is a good idea with any configuration, but it becomes more critical with a stacked mag.

We did lots of grey shading today. I try to get the exact tone I want with one shot, but when in doubt on an entire arm or back piece I keep things a bit light. Once all the background is done I can make decisions about which areas to make darker and which to leave lighter.

I put a base tone of yellow in all the flames today, I'll put some red and orange over that at some point. I'll often lay in light tones as a base, then do the darker tones over that during a later session. That helps me to control my dark tones, leaving more skin tone and light colors.

If I run my machine around 115 Hz my shading is smooth and I can work pretty fast. That seems to be the right speed for shading – for me. Exact machine speed will be different for each tattooer, based on hand motion and how they tattoo.

Movies today were: "The Waterboy" – really a good movie to watch while tattooing or getting tattooed, "Amelie" – French with subtitles, kind of hard to read while getting tattooed, but will keep your mind off the tattooing. "Caddyshack" – no thinking required. We played this near the end of the session, and nobody was paying any attention to it.