I had a similar situation with a client and on the second session I switched from eternal black to silverback and used long taper #12's for lining and #12's for shading and her skin took the color much better. Also I did hang the needles out a bit more and slowed down and took time to pay attention to the saturation and my strech. All in all I think my strech could have been better to begin with and the long taper liners in my opinion worked best for her skin type.
For reference my client was a 20yr old very pail skinned young lady. But I did notice her skin was thick and with my normal setup I was getting dull lines.
Sometimes slowing down can make a big difference. When you run your machines so fast, especially if you have thicker ink, you are essentially making more holes in the skin than ink that is going into them. All that leads to is irritation, and especialy with thick tanned skin, slowing down can be good. Are you trying to get rich color into her tanned skin? How dark is she? Color will not look as vibrant on darker skin, so if she's really tan, don't get yourself crazy trying to get super bright color into her. That's just how it is. It always looks more subtle. As for when I color, I rarely run my machines faster than 8.5 for coloring, though sometimes I set them around 9.8 but it depends on my technique that I'm using as well as what ink. In a way, going slower has made me faster - I feel more efficient.
For Edmonton, $150 isn't bad at all. Here in Toronto, the rates are from $120 in the little shops on the outskirts of town, to about $200 in the downtown core. I know people charging $180/hour as junior artists because that's the shop rate. Especially if the shop is on a very busy street for foot traffic. You start undercutting, and pretty soon you'll have a brick thrown through your window in some places. I've also worked in towns where the shop rate is $70/hour, but here is the difference:
Town with $70/hr rate: 2 bedroom townhouse = $645/month
City with $150 - $200/hr rate: 2 bedroom townhouse = $1,800+ /month
I'd tell this client to stop tanning if she wants to get tattooed - do you know if she exposes her fresh tattoos to the tanning bed? That sure doesn't help matters. She technically should be waiting longer than 2 weeks to go tanning after a getting a fresh tattoo. She might not be doing that. Even if she 'claims' to be doing that, she might not be - she could be embarassed to tell you that she is messing up her own stuff.
As far as that drawing goes, I've used those principles when stretching and it works quite well. Say, on the area just above the knee - it stretches quite fantastically in a north/south manner to allow for the bend of the body part, right? So, if you try to stretch the skin in that direction, it will stretch a lot, and you'll have to work harder to get the pigment in. If you stretch east and west, against the grain so to say, you'll get a tighter stretch with less work because the skin is working with you better. With this in mind, you'll see that the lines on the front of the knees go east and west, which is the way I would stretch. Try it! Even if you are just stretching your own skin to draw on yourself with a ballpoint pen.
Not too bad for a GIRL, eh?
Hi Alie, thanks for the verification on the rates there, I was starting to feel like I was some kind of pirate. lol.
She is tanned but not dark skinned. Here is a pic of some of it, all the background needs to get done still but as you can see, her skin appears really textured? Not hugely tanned but thick. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater Sorry about the link size.
I will try slowing down and the hot water in my wash bottles for the next sitting. I have spent so much time with her over the last 6 months we have become pretty good friends, so her sittings are getting cheaper and cheaper, and she also acknowledged that her skin simply does not take the ink so she is willing to try pretty much anything to get this done quicker (she is also a bit of a girl when it comes to pain, lol)
I noticed that you said you are using 7's to line with. I'm in ky, AMD we have quite a few farmers and country boys in my area. Many of them have skin like rhino hide from years of out door work. I've run into the issue of poor lines and lack luster saturation when using some groupings that are tightly packed ,but itseemed to go away when I dropped down a grouping size. Lining with 3's and 5's and packing with 5's , shading with 7's . It really helped. This was using a bishop, so very simmilar to neotats. Dunno if this will help ya. But hope it will
2 years or 22 years in it is awkward having to have to deal with skin issues mid session, and everyone I've ever spoken with (who's been honest) has had something at some point. Thin tight papery skin that has seen years of sun or wrinkly armpit skin, super dry foot skin, whatever. I asked a client to rub her skin with cold pressed flax or avocado oil every day for a week before I could work on her skin because it seemed so thin and weak, and another client lied about having leptospirosis or some other weird cattle disease that caused a whole sleeve to infect. Whether they are urban legend or not, there are stories of people who simple reject color even after repeated tries...I think Keith Richards might have been named in one of those stories...something how he got the same piece 3 times by 3 different artists and it never stayed.
I'm pretty sure the Keith Richards thing has to do with blood alcohol content People that do a lot of drinking don't take ink as well as they should. For the drunks they are typically low on potassium so the best advice for frequent drinkers is a lot of jello, bananas or potato chips, to boost their vitamin K.
I one the other hand rarely ever drink any more, but my skin is like this and it took awhile to figure out what worked to keep it in all the way to completely healed. Every tattoo I have solid fields in has been redone at least 3 times that is; until I finally found the magic bullet combination over a decade ago.
Lining on me is fine no matter the setup; although a fast and punchy machine is best. Solid fields are another story. On my skin it requires slowing down hand speed not the voltage, an angle of about 30-35 degrees instead of 45ish, and short taper is an absolute must; anything else and my skin is going to laugh at you. A drop or two of distilled in really thick pigments is also a good idea only if my skin is taking a particular color a little too slowly.
Be extra careful when you run into my skin type because if you don't use what I described above you are either going to have ink falling out when it heals or chew it up trying to get it in there. Although, a short taper and good pigment is the most important remedy.
Now to buy more bananas!
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