coloring questions

1. has anyone diluted their colors for any reason? I ask because im wondering if that would be suitable to do? say your doing a flower, yellow petals, would you dilute the yellow down and go from a light to dark yellow? Or, would you grab another color?

2. Does anyone go over their shading with the color? As in, after you do some light gray wash would you then go over it with color to make that color a shade darker?????

sorry if they seem like obvious answers to some, not much experience with colors yet and i dont see any videos out their with much help explaining them.....

1. NO- but I have heard it treats colors just like it does black...you create a wash. I've always added white and lightened it up like that.

2. Yes. Someone, maybe here, mentioned that. If you lay down a light wash and then go over it with solid color you get a very natural looking "shadow" from darker to lighter but the color is still a part of all of it. (did that make sense?) Now, if I know I will have shading and color the shading always goes down first for me. I just like how it looks.

Try it with colored pencils and you'll see it work. I have started doing it with drawing to practice the technique a bit.

I actually found a couple YOUTUBE vids that did what i was looking for with the color. Im usually afraid of starting off WAY too dark, then Im screwed.
I dont know if i would actually dilute the colors or not, i havent tried it but it might be interesting sometime. trial and error i guess.........
I kinda figured that going over a light gray wash would make a natural shadow. I havent actually done that with color yet but I think it would work well with the way I tattoo now...
THanks for the help Mark!

I used white ink with different amounts of the color desired added to it till i got the effect I was looking for. Then dropt the value as needed to get different shades, worked awesome for me and I worked the dark areas in first using petroleum jelly to keep them from mixing were it was undesired light to dark would have been easier

I've seen several techniques and read a bunch about different techniques for getting different shades in your colors, but I aint no expert so take it all with a grain of salt.

Watering down a color should change the dilution of the color but not the color itself, the only way I can really explain that is taking a yellow marker and putting it on white paper you have the yellow that the marker is meant to be. Now if you take that same yellow marker and put it on a transparency sheet (like just a plastic sheet) you still have that yellow, but it's more transparent it's more of just giving a slight hue when you hold it up to a sheet of white paper. I don't even know if what I just said makes any sense in trying to explain, hope it does.

Adding a different color to the color you want to change will actually change the color itself, a technique I saw explained by Mario Barth once seems to work really well when I'm coloring and want thing to blend and transition. If you've got, lets say orange on your needles and your going to fade to a yellow, in that transition area don't clean your needle to get the orange off before jumping into the yellow just dip it in the yellow and roll. It ends up giving some really nice looking transitions and you end up with some color work that really looks nice and natural in the transitions. Some would argue that the color is not reproducible if you need to do touch up, but so what? You know what you did to get it and going back in for touch up just dip in some orange and then some yellow and go, it works and it looks nice.

Another technique I've picked up, mostly for small areas, is mixing inks on my needle to get the color I want. I'll dip in say a yellow and a blue to get a green shade I want then maybe dip in orange to tweak the shade a little. This gets messy sometimes because to check the shade I'll do a little flick down of the wrist on a clean area of my workstation next to the ink cups to see what the ink looks like, I set aside an area of my workstation set up just for this kind of mixing so I can do the "flick check" normally right behind the ink cup area. When I say it's messy I don't mean your flicking ink everywhere, a small drop will fall on the barrier film set down on your work area right behind the ink cups. When you do your station break down it's on you protective barrier so it just picks up in your clear plastic barrier and is disposed of. I've had some really good results with this and seen some much better artists than me have some really great results with it.

Lastly, I go over lightly shaded areas with color all the time, just make sure you're not damaging the skin when you do it. You already know if it looks like it doesn't want anymore work it's best to just cut it off and finish it in the next session. I also have gotten away from strictly working from dark colors to light and like where my art is going much more now. I think the dark to light technique is a good start point for beginning artists to understand how tattooing works and have a grasp of a tired and true tattoo method that's been the standard for years. Once you get going and really start improving the dark to light is one that can be, not ignored, but broken in many cases. Light to dark can have some really nice effects on color and it's transitions.

Man I feel like I typed too much, but just wanted to throw some technique stuff out there for some folks to try out.

Good Luck

I dilute colours just the same as for grey washes, you can also mix in the tube with a cup full of distilled water counting elephants. It just gives a faded out colour. I did a tat a little while ago that had the guys family motto on top of a claymore sword, on top of a scottish flag. To give the whole thing depth I did the lettering in a very dark black (kuro sumi) the sword was just an outline in a thin (3rl) 50% wash and the flag was done in a very light (12%) blue wash. It was a pretty good effect and made the layers stand out rather than just be a flat mass of colour.

Wrathrone, you are a wealth of knowledge. Awesome posts everytime. No shit.

Thanks man, I love this forum. The tattoo business used to be so closed and difficult to get any information about I'm just glad to see some folks willing to share and help people out, I think it's awesome.

Wrathrone, you are a wealth of knowledge. Awesome posts everytime. No shit.

agreed!!!

I dilute colours just the same as for grey washes, you can also mix in the tube with a cup full of distilled water counting elephants. It just gives a faded out colour. I did a tat a little while ago that had the guys family motto on top of a claymore sword, on top of a scottish flag. To give the whole thing depth I did the lettering in a very dark black (kuro sumi) the sword was just an outline in a thin (3rl) 50% wash and the flag was done in a very light (12%) blue wash. It was a pretty good effect and made the layers stand out rather than just be a flat mass of colour.