How to Get a Tattoo: Shading

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Shatsie Gorman. I'm here as a tattoo artist, a professional tattoo artist for expert village. Alright, what we've done is we've used a more solid black pigment in this area. We're kind of giving the feeling that this is looking out into a landscape from inside a cavern. I'm using a wash technique, or what is in effect, very much like a sumi technique where the pigment itself is distributed much more thinly through the liquid aspect of the carrier for the pigment. So here's a very opaque and very dense black, and this black will give more of a feeling of graphite or pencil on the surface of the skin as it heals. And it's very similar to chinese brush painting or Japanese Sumi style painting. The technique is the same, it's just that there's much less pigment there so that you can achieve a very very soft gradiation. It's very similiar in effect to the portrait work you see here. Ghandi was gone by a fellow named Jack Rudy, who works out of Anahiem California. He's a friend of mine and he knew that Ghandi was my spiritual guide and he gave me that tattoo as a gift. "