How To Color In A Tattoo

Video Transcript

"Okay we are now finished with the outline. We just got a rough outline here as you can see and now we are going to begin putting some color in it. It is important here to know what to start with. Me personally I am going to start and put in some white highlights and work with the lighter colors first. The reason being you can blend a dark color into a light color but you can't blend a light color into a light color. Just kind of like working with markers. It is very similar. I am going to go ahead and start with that. I am going to put some white in first which for reference when you are applying white to the skin, it is difficult to see. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time for the tattoo to heal and then it will start to surface. But with any luck, it will show here. So here we are going to get started. I am going to start with the white. So that we don't get any cross contamination with any of the colors, I've got a brand new needle, fresh tube, fresh clean white and we are going to start with that. Now the tattoo needles that I am using for this particular application are 8 needle grouping and they are round. It is a round grouping. Okay and generally you want to work in small type circles. You can see the white beginning to go in. You want to work in real small tight circles. You don't want to go too deep and you don't want to overwork the area. You see the blood starts to come through a little bit. When that happens, you want to wipe the tip of the needle always backwards as such as you want to get some fresh white. As I am working this red color in right now, I am just filling and with filling you are going to work in circular motions like I am doing now. The ink starts to go in pretty well and then what I will do is run right up to the edge to make sure that it is clean up against your black line. Okay and make sure that your detail work is done. That you get in the tight areas. Then if like for instance, I am working in a circular motion, real small type circles, after you do that you may want to cross hatch a little bit too because you really have to get the ink into the skin and it helps. You see I move forward in a hatching motion like this and then I will go back in and work in some tight circles. Okay. Just want to inspect to make sure you've got the ink in the skin without a bunch of pin holes of skin color coming through. You want to dab just a little bit of Vaseline to keep it from bleeding too much and keep it soft. As you notice, I have some areas such as here, here , down here and also a sweeping motion. Those areas I am going to leave skin color. That gives a little bit of contrast. Going to work in these tight little areas. I don't know if you can tell but I am using very small circular motions and I am working at a 45 degree angle with the machine. You can see it went in real smooth right there. I am going to work around this area and we have this area here, go around that a little bit. Then I am going to try and get in there and do a little bit of hatching action to cover some area. Small tight circles, hatching action. A lot of different artists will tell you different things and like I said these are just the basics. This is just a simple tattoo that we are working with just to get your started. I want you guys to keep in mind that if the color won't in the person's skin, don't push it because some people's skin won't take it. Everybody's skin reacts different to pigment. Okay."