Grey Wash and Color Shading Basics

Grey Wash and Color Shading Basics

There are two sides to shading a tattoo, the technical side and the
artistic side. The artistic side takes many years of practice, which I suggest
you study art books that cover pencil shading, color blending, color matching,
and light reflection. The best way you can practice art is by repetition. Look
at every thing, and then try to draw it. Pay attention to lighting. One rule of
shadowing is that in light reflection the shadowed part of the image will be in
the direct opposite position of the lighted section. The human eye can
distinguish fourteen shades of grey. White is the absence of grey where black
is the saturation of grey. White (skin tone) would be the shade one and the
black will be the fourteenth shade. While shading you should do the best you
can to use all fourteen shades. When shading you the dark line and the light
line. The dark line is the darkest part of the area that will be shaded and the
light line will be the lightest part. The dark line doesn’t always have to be
black, just like the light line won’t always be white. You have to determine
how dark the beginning area will be and how light the end is before you start
and area. This is the measure of hues. A hue is the value of a color. If you
take a line that fades form solid black to solid white then the black would be
100%, the white of the line would be 0% and the middle would be 50%. So if I
said that your dark line need to be 35% and your light line needed to be 15%
you would know that the line or area that needed to be shaded would be
rather light. A good way to practice this theory on paper is to draw a number
of lines each at a different length. At one side write a 100% and the other
write 0%. At the 100% line make a solid black square as dark as you can get it.
Then try to shade out the side of the box that goes toward the 0% until you
can no longer see where the box started and the shading began. Use a pencil
and don’t smudge the graphite, this will not help you in tattooing. You should
shade by going over the area many times instead of just pushing harder.
To understand the technical side of shading, you must understand that
shading with a tattoo machine is a combination of times gone over, dilution of
pigment, the speed you follow through with, and depth. Think of the skin
depth the same way you would a light and dark line, in percentages. Unlike
with a pencil where you get a darker line by pushing hard, tattoo pigment is
as dark as it’s going to get. If you push harder you will dig and scar the skin.
Instead, we get lighter by diluting the pigment with water, witch hazel, or
distilled water. The act of diluting the pigment to get a lighter affect is called
washing. When you hear someone say I got a grey wash tattoo that means that
the artist used only black and washed out the pigment to shade the image.
There are two main methods of washing pigment, this would be pre mixing
wash, and on the spot washing. To have an affective wash you need at least
four main pigment densities. This includes solid black, dark wash, medium
wash and light wash. To pre mix, you need three empty pigment bottles. The
darkness of your wash is a personal thing that varies depending on the artist,
so you will have to see what works for you. Line the bottles up in a row. I
prefer 1oz bottles to keep it simple. Drip solid black pigment in each bottle
according to how dark you want them to be. My pre mix (I use pre mix very
little) is ten drops for dark wash, seven drops for medium wash, and three
drops for light wash. Then you fill the bottles the rest of the way with
distilled water. Make sure they are close tightly, and then shake them up well
to mix the pigment. Make sure to mark each bottle because on the outside
they will all look black.
The other form of grey wash is “freehand” or “on the spot” mixing. I
prefer freehand but it takes time to learn is well, and you need to use the
same black on a regular basis to get the feel for how it will dilute. If I were
setting up for a grey wash tattoo I would have a large cap of black and four
empty large caps. Sometime before I would begin tattooing I will fill the
empty caps with water from the water spray bottle. If you dip your needle in
black, then it’s black, though you will use solid black very little during grey
wash. If you dip your needle in black and then the first empty cap, you have
dark wash. Dip in black, first empty cap, then the second you have a lighter
wash. Dip in both and then the third you have medium, and so on until you
get light. After a time of tattooing you will no longer need to use the black,
each cap will take on a color of its own. You may have to periodically add
water as the caps empty. It takes a while to get use to this method, but it
allows you much more control over the hue value placed in each shaded area.
Using speed of your movement is very important during shading. If you go
slowly, then you will have a darker area filled in, just like the sponge. When I
shade or color blend, my hand moves so fast that it’s hard to not see my hand
as a blur. Since you will have to move fast to get a light hue you will have to
drag the needle or shade in the direction of your dominant hand. If you try to
push the needle you will get stuck under the skin leaving a very dark spot and
hurting your client. Your needle is only so wide. Because of this you will have
to work your way up the dark line. Moving fast up the line will help you better
blend the hue in so it looks like a solid area instead of a bunch of lines coming
from the line. Practice this on paper with a pencil.
If one hundred percent of the needle depth is 2mm then fifty percent is
1mm. you should pull the machine out of the skin as you come to the lighter
side of the area. This is called whip shading, due to the appearance of you
whipping the machine. When shading or coloring a tattoo you need to keep in
your mind that you can always add to a tattoo never take away, so you would
shade light then get darker until you are satisfied with your out come. The
starting point of the needle braking skin will always be darker due to the
inability for measurement. You can not tell how dark your line will be until
you see it in the skin. Your starting point will need to be your dark line. Let’s
say you are using a light washed grey to shade a line. You would shade out
from the dark line very lightly but quick to about the 50% mark pulling the
needle out of the skin by the 75% mark in a straight direction, not circles.
Repeat this all the way up the dark line till it looks like a light, but solid hue.
Always go in one direction, using whip shading start from dark line to light. If
you use circles during wash, the hue will be too dark. Then starting back at
the beginning of the dark line, do the same thing but reduce the length by ten
percent every time. So the second pass will be from the dark line to 40%,
pulling out by 65%. Repeat this until you get all the way to back to the dark
line. Getting shorter strokes as you progress will give the area the shaded
look. Even though you are using one hue of wash, every time you go over an
area it will get a little darker. This is how you get the hue value form 100%
black to 0% white, or which ever value that you may choose. Going over each
area several times is very hard on the skin; this is why we use different values
of wash. If you know an area will be light then you will use a light wash, and a
dark wash for a darker area. This way you don’t have to go over something
fifty times to get it dark enough. As you progress with this technique you will
see how to shade a larger line with each wash hue to make a more dramatic
change form white to solid black.
Color washing and blending is the same technique but less stuff. Black
pigment is more watery and so dark; we have to use the mixes to get the
desired hues. Color pigment is thicker and easier to work with. Lets say that
I’m going to shade with only red. The dark and light line would still apply but
you don’t need a bunch of empty caps for each color. I would make sure my
black or other pigment is full washed out of the tube, and then I would dip in
the water designated for the red pigment. If I dip in the water quickly while
the machine is running, then I have an 80% hue of red. I count two seconds
then I have about a 50% hue, or a medium wash. Three seconds washed out
the red for a 20% (light) wash. You simply shade with the light, then work your
way to the solid red, blending it till smooth. You can wash any color just like
you can with black and grey. The use of at least a seven mag during wash
fading will make your tattoos look so much better. If you try to wash with a
round it will work, but not nearly as smooth. All of the needles in a mag are
right in a row, so as long as you run the mag flat on the skin they will all
puncture at the same depth. A lining needle is round, by the time you get to
the level of the needle that gives you the widest coverage, you’re at half
depth. The needles on the bottom are much deeper in the skin then the
center needles. Since they are deeper they leave a darker mark giving your
blending distinguishable lines. The smoother the shading transition form dark
to light, the more realistic your tattoo will look, which leads me to another
technique.
Glycerin
Glycerin is the grey wash artist’s best friend. You can purchase 100%
pure glycerin form any pharmacy. It’s used in many, many, many things so it
should be easy to find. Pure glycerin is way too harsh to use, so you will need
a separate spray bottle for this. You want to mix the glycerin 50% with water.
It’s very thick so you will need to shake it very well to get the proper mix.
Once mixed use this mixture instead of water to do your grey washing with.
It’s much thicker than water so you have the grey dilution but the thickness of
regular pigment. Glycerin will also allow the more realistic smoother shade
than any other chemical. Another cool thing your glycerin mix will be good for
is to customize your pigments. Say you are using a blue that is just too
watery, then add some glycerin mix and shake. It will thicken it right up
without loosing color quality. If your pigment is too thick or perhaps the
bottle has dried out a little, then apply witch hazel to thin it out. You can
bring older bottles of pigment back to life with these two chemicals, worth