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Hey bro,

For needle type and configuration, I would suggest mithra needles, bugpin curve, 7,9,11 mag, for your portrait work. or long taper m2 configuration.
4 round for most of the finer detail shading.
black and grey work I would suggest dynamic black, goes in a little darker but lightens up a lot once healed.
I assume you asking what type of carrier to use with your grey wash, I would suggest, just plain distilled water, or try silverback clear.
as for size that is solely bases on your skill level, but personally I would try to keep each portrait around 6 inches or bigger. the larger the tattoo the better the detail in key areas like the eyes (reflections etc).
also bro as for any advise on making your portraits more realistic, I would suggest that you slow down your machine, keep a consistent sweeping motion to build your tones. if your machine is slower, you can spend more time to smooth out the blends. also for the really lighter tone be a little lighter on the skin and in some cases just kiss the surface. it will hardly be noticeable once healed, but as a whole it will tighten up the piece more.
A common problem some people have when doing portraits is that they focus mostly on the eyes, nose and mouth,and sometimes get lost in the tones and use that as their bases for finishing the piece, in stead of doing this, try to start at the bottom of the piece and work your way up. or from the outside in. focus on the details of the entire portrait. more often than not, once an artist is doing the portrait , after the eyes,noes,and,mouth is done, they don't focus as much detail on the hair, or ears, or all other surrounding sections of the piece. if you work from the outside in, it will allow you to get the areas that normally don't get the most attention finished first, and even towards the end you will spend just as much time on the eyes, nose ect as you did with the surrounding areas.
another tip for details is in areas of say the eyelashes and eye brows. if you have the skills with a single round, I would suggest that you use a much lighter shade instead of black for these areas, this will allow for a more separated look of the details and will look much cleaner and sharper for many years after.
as for you highlights, do go into it with straight white, but rather give the white a quick dunk into your dirty rinse cup to tone it down a little for a more polished look. also your highlights are the one area that can really bring your portrait together, so focus on this.
another thing you can do before starting your tattoo, is to bump up the contrast of your picture in photoshop, edit key areas that may not be noticeable in the reference photo. also you will find that the most realistic tattoos are not exact copies of the original reference photo, but that the contrast in key areas are bumped up much more than the reference photo.
another small tip if you don't already know is your stencil, put a lot of time on your stencil, add as much detail as possible, the details will really enhance your work. don't get me wrong, some artist can just do a few lines and pull off an incredible portrait, but until your skills are at that level, I would suggest lots of detail in your stencil. the better the stencil , the better the tattoo. well bro, I think that covers all your questions,

I hope that helps man. take care.

Stephen Stacey

I believe this is going to vary from artist to artist, but my opinion is; after looking at your portrait work, you would benefit from a better understanding of washes and a faster running shader. Some artists use slow, soft running machines for b&g shading and get great results. Personally, I recommend the fast cutback style shader for gradations or blends. Also, a mixture of distilled water, witch hazel, and glycerin makes a perfect wash solution as well as a color solution like silverback clear. I'm giving out big trade secrets now, LOL, but 45% water, 45% witch hazel and around 10% glycerin is about right. These proportions can vary as well. P.S. Superman is right too, just a different style with slower machine speed.

Oh yeah, bugpins are awesome for this and as much detail in the stencil as possible without getting confusing is also best.

thanks superman and rest of u for help and thanks for the tip on water , witch hazel and glycerin and dipping white in to dirty cup of water for that glossey effect

hey bro,

You may have misread what I said. When I said "polished look", I didn't mean brighter or shiny, I meant more of a clean, or more realistic look. the reason for dipping white into your dirty cup is to tone down the white so that it is not "too bright". if white highlights are too bright in certain areas, it doesn't look as realistic. like putting straight white into the highlights of the eye. if you do a quick dip before putting it in this area it looks better than straight white.

take care,

stephen stacey

Pick up some tattoo DVDs or books for what your looking at getting better in certain areas. Bug pins are fantastic! Photoshop is fantastic for portrait/ realistic effects(bumping up contrast etc)learn it, you'll see immediate improvements.

hi mike thanks for help does your dvd cover things like u just told me on portrates , thanks

Hi everybody!!
This Forum is amazing!! Very Helpful thread !!!

I Always heared about the sweeping - motion to build up your shades!! And of course i own some dvd material to "see" this motion!! But as my english isn´t that good it would be great to discribe this motion maybe in other words!! Because seeing and understanding something like this is very important for me!! So it would be great for helping me out!! Gretings from Vienna and happy new year ;)

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Hey bro,

"sweeping motion" is just like it sounds, similar to what you would do if you were sweeping the floor with a broom.
You move your mag in a back and forth motion, however you don't keep the needles buried in the skin, you only enter the skin in one direction, for example if you were shading say the side of a face during a portrait, you would move your mag in the natural direction of the contours of the face, but only enter the skin on the down stroke or up stroke, however you can go back and forth as well but you will need to change you hand motion to prevent any chance of having darker areas as you return the motion, example make sure you enter and exit the skin in an "arc" motion, don't go straight in as it will create a dark spot at your starting points. begin the motion of entering the skin further back from the "actual area" this will help you feather/soften the edges of your shaded area.

Hope that helps, a little difficult to explain, this is something that would have been show to you during an apprenticeship. but like mike said. buy some more material on the topic so you can see this technique done by other artist. also if you have the opportunity, try and get tattooed by mega pros, you can learn a lot by watching these masters at work.

Take care.

Stephen Stacey

put the needles in the skin and work like in any other tattoo
there isnt any diference in make a portrait or a tribal,old school,its all the same
dont leastning the kids

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welcome back Captain dunsel, we missed you!!!!

where to start where to start.........

put the needles in the skin and work like in any other tattoo = BULLSHIT

there isnt any diference in make a portrait or a tribal,old school,its all the same = BULLSHIT

i was starting to think you only spoke bullshit but then i rememberd what you said further up in the post

'im gonna crazy,so mutch bad information in forums
make me sick' .........LEAST YOU GOT SOMETHING RIGHT

i actually hate seeing your name on any post . im getting the feeling other people are too .

seriously why so negative all the time?? if you think people are giving bad info , give a good opinion and not so spitefull :D

'DELLBOY' . supermans giving you some pretty good pointers . so il keep it short . i use 2 mags a small . normaly a 9 bugpin curved and a 19 bugpin curved . i work slowly and softly . tallens black normaly 6 caps working from light to dark . if you would like some good dvds i reccomend andy engle , franco vescovi and angelo grisafi 1 & 2 . all good for black and grey portraits .

HAPPY NEW YEAR EH? ;)

Thank you very much guys!!
That helps alot!! I already have some DVD´s from Angelo and andy EngeL!!
An of course i could see the motion but i also want to understand it!! That helps a lot!! Now i got it!! Thank you!!!

greetings

Probably should have posted this in here SORRY....


Since we are talking criticism. This is start of my first portrait. Not a paying customer its on my Dad. He is my practice canvas. I am going to tighten up the lips a bit darker to blend the lines around them. I was afraid to loose the stencil and lined them with a 3 with a (1) from element wash but they seem to be to dark. Got about 2.5 hours into this and was wondering any thoughts. Please be kind it's my first one....


I used

7curved mag
15 curved mag
3 tight liner

http://www.louroberto.com/dac_1.jpg

Thanks

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Hey Lou,

First thing you need to do is thank your father for letting you do this on him, there is truly no gift better than to sacrifice your skin for the pursuit of someones artistic growth. and volunteers like this is very rare, yet so important when trying to grow in this field, so you really owe your dad a lot, for this sacrifice.
with that said, I would recommend that you stick with images that will allow for mistakes when you are trying to get into portraits,
for example I would focus a lot of attention on doing B&G roses and flowers for a while to help tighten up your blending from dark to light, also if you want to do portraits, try to focus on images like, Frankenstein and more zombie like images first before your Dracula image., this will allow you to get away with making some mistakes and you can hide them better in those types of images..
I'd give some advise on how to help your stencil last longer, but I think that has already been covered on this forum a few times , so look those up.
As for your current "first attempt", it's not too bad, however from what I notice to make an photo more realistic, you need to avoid lining the image unless its needed. think of your needles as more of a paintbrush rather than jst a liner and a shader. you can do a lot of shading in detailed areas like the eyes by using regular 4 and 5 rounds,. a tight 3 round can be a little more difficult in some cases because of the tight grouping. when you use tight 3 rounds and single rounds, it take some skill to be able to use and control the ink flow. some artist feel that because the liner is so tight that they can be less careful with it because its so small and you won't notice. but some of the biggest blowouts come from a single needle and 3 tight rounds, especially over the years you will notice these lines getting very thick over time. anytime you use very tight liners, be sure to use a much lighter tone of grey when you do details like eyelashes and eyebrows. with a lighter tone, it will look much cleaner and more crisp over time, years after the tattoo has been completed as opposed to using straight black.
another thing I noticed is that you may have lost sight of the source light in this photo, it is very common to see some artist focus so much attention on the eyes, nose, and mouth, that they lose sight of the entire image, and end up losing the tonal values in the photo, and begin to work off the tone they have already put in the nose,mouth,and eyes, if you get what I mean.
I have taken the liberty to photoshop your source image that you have used for this tattoo, and I have changed and bumped up the contrast in key areas of this photo to help you finish your piece, the contrast is changed enough so that you can recover from what you have and work around the areas of the mouth that you have already completed and help you to fix the areas that you have lined with your liner.. when you see this photo that I send you, you will notice the source light is much more predominant than what you have so far.
Please understand, this is just my opinion, I am not a mega pro like Mike DeVries. Im just regurgitating what I have learned from my personal research and advise I've obtained from other professionals. other people may have a better opinion. but I recommend you listed to those who give you positive advise and try to ignore those you just want to bring you down and trash talk your work..

Don't forget to check your email for that reference photo I sent you.

I hope that helps a little bro, take care.

Stephen Stacey

Thanks Steve, I will check for that now. Are you on Facebook. we could communicate there better. Thanks for the help man. I am truly grateful. Thank you my friend. I was gonna try the Frankenstein first. That will be my next attempt after I finish this one. Thanks again man

gotta love them in depth answers ;)

stephen are you the guy who added me of fb?

.

Yeah Sonny,

I believe that's you on my friends list.


Stephen Stacey

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Yeah Sonny,

I believe that's you on my friends list.


Stephen Stacey

im so bad because im tired to read shit information.
its impossible to work with a bug pin 15 mag
bug pin is an illusion for kids
this new kind of portraits make me sick,put ink in the skin is what it counts,no matter the tattoo is,tribal ,portrait,japonese,its all the same