Round shaders for color work?

[Caleb's Addiction]

So I just did this piece last night in 4.5 hours! Which, if you knew me, you'd be like... WTF?!?! Dude you on meth or what?

I used a 5RL to line, and had set up an 8rs (textured envy) for power lining and a couple mags for the color work.

Thing is, I was diggin the power lining so much, that I just kept trucking with it for the color. Shit was going in so fast and saturated.

Anyone else use round shaders for color?

[OwlsDen]

I use a lot of loose round needles for black and grey. Even more so I use a lot of tight rounds for detail shading. I do the same with color too, but I tend to work more in black ad grey. At some point there was a crossroads and everyone started saying that mags were the only way to do color and shading. But at one time everything was done with rounds. It is just what works best for you.

There is a forum member Otto that does killer color work all with rounds.

[Patrick]

They can be a little more time consuming. But rounds pack detail color like nothing else.
I've worked with a few artists who use nothing but semi-tight 7's for everything. With some pretty amazing results.

[FreeJole]

Dude its crazy i was JUST about to post about this. I am on the verge of going exclusively round shaders for everything. Personally i find they are MUCH more consistent with far less skin trauma than mags. For me, in a sense i guess you work slower as in you cover less area but it goes in perfect on the first pass so i tend to be able to "move on" to the next area quicker and overall complete a tattoo in the same time or less when compared to using mags. I will still use mags here and there but i am definitely using majority round shaders. Great post man

[CajunDave]

tattoo came out nice !

[slicksteel]

rounds were really popular in a lot walk-in flash shops in the 80s- throw one semi loose 7 and do it all with it-cut your needle costs and tube cleaning time in half!

[Caleb's Addiction]

I've done two more full color pieces since this post using only 8 and 14 round shaders for the color. I'm way faster now, and getting colors a lot more saturated. These are both pieces in a sleeve design so don't have background yet and are still in progress...

The timepiece is 4 hours total before he tapped and the skull, which I had already lined in a previous session was only 3 1/2 hours to color!

Loving life with these round shaders. Oh and I kicked my mentor in the balls for never having taught me about these during my apprenticeship!

[serial1313]

It may be going in faster for you, but I think the blue in the water & the crown could be a lot smoother if you used mag's. I think your mentor might be kicking you back in the balls. I guess I'll be the bad guy here. Nobody else is saying anything.

[Caleb's Addiction]

I kick way fucking harder!!

Not going to debate the smoothness issue with you serial. Smooth consistent color saturation is hard, and I've got a long ways to go, what I'm saying is I'm getting better results using the rounds than I was using mags. I still had smoothness issues, and was taking twice as long.

[otto]

smooth and consistent can be achived with a round shader even with a liner,it takes some time to learn the trick but it works very good,everything stays in the hand movement