Making grey wash

Just got back into tattooing after a 7 year lay off.. apprenticed in 1993.. Tattooed for 8 years and now I'm back with a vengeance.

Question is, i bought Intense Zuper Black and wanted to make up gray washes... whats thew best solution and dilution it for doing B&G work ... Is Witch Hazel the standard or distilled water?

I want to make up some fresh 2 oz bottles of perhaps three shades.... light powder, medium powder, and dark shade...

[canvasyou]

I prefer to just use alcohol -
there are a ton of pre-made washes out there as well
check out silver back
and a lot of Sumi style pigments.

You can also mix in the caps - no need to mix it in giant bottles
the dipping from cap to cap will eventually dilute and change your mix anyway - during course of tattoo
hope this helps
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well, what you do is you throw that Mairio Barth shit in the bin and buy some real ink like Eternal, and then you use good old water...


Now, thats the first post out the way,,,,so can someone tell me who created my account and mailed it to me?

Who runs this show?

u know that eternal and intenze are made by the same people right....

for grey wash inks, i would use a normal black, not a triple, or tribal black. Kuro Sumi is the shit, i've had good results with Moms onyx black as well. If you want a pre mix bottle, then pour 1/2 a bottle of ink, and then use distilled h2o, then make another with a 1/4 ink 3/4 h20, for your lighter tones. Using alcohol or water depends on what the ink is cut with, ie, prizm is alcohol based, eternal is water based. you need to consider these things. But if you got your technique down, you can create very nice B&G effects with straight black ink, or just use a rinse cup of distilled h2o and thin your ink as needed.

Mario barth makes intenze and terry welker makes eternal i think...

I use alcohol,just put three to five drops of black in an ink cap,fill it with alcohol,stir with a toothpick,there's your greywash.

I prefer to make my washes on the spot in the ink caps, I primarily use the small ones (#9's I believe) and for a light wash I'll do one drop of kuri sumi lining ink and distilled water to the top. Then two drops for something darker, and so on. I've also used witch hazel, which contains some alcohol.

I mix down with witch hazel; seems to keep the redness down so tone values show up better,imo. Set out 5 #16 ink cups. pure black in the first one, #2 75% or so, #3 50%, #4 25%, #5 pure witch hazel. That's not the way I do it, but it seems to work for a lot of people who like to pre-mix tone values. Good luck.