Will Whitten

For this post I’m going to again attack a grapefruit. Sorry for any citrus fans out there… This time I’m going to attempt to put one good colour tattoo piece on the grapefruit. I’ve created a stencil from the American Traditional style rose that I drew in my I Supply the Art Work… blog. In order to get ready for colour work I set up my table the same way.

Like I said in The First Few Lines I am approaching every tattoo session the same way whether it’s on a grapefruit or my first real tattoo on a person I want to be thorough.

I found some tips about stencil application on the Mike DeVries’ Forum it took a bit to sort through the posts but there was some good information on there. All in all the site is full of some decent tips but you really have to search for them. It’s an open forum so anyone can post. The answers vary from great information from reputable artists to here-say from random internet posters. You have to take everything you read with a grain of salt on an open forum like this.

Here is my stencil:

Here it is applied:

Now it’s time to get to tattooing. I feel fairly confident with the liner but this is the first time I’ll be using a shader to put colour and shading into something. I talked to Tyler about some colour and shading techniques and then found a few pieces of advice from Tattoo Education. Specifically their Ask Guy section. This seems like a great resource. Guy Aitchison has a great blog that is full of info and is featured in the “Ask Guy” column in Tattoo Magazine. If Tattoo Magazine trusts his advice I do too. Plus he offers some pretty awesome looking online webinars. If I had the money I would definitely look into taking one. They’re expensive but they seem like a great place to learn without having to travel to conventions to hear renowned artists teach/speak. One day I will save up and take one.

So on to my first colour tattoo.

I thought it might be cool to time-lapse the video of my grapefruit tattoo. I think it looks pretty awesome.

Here’s a finished Photo:

Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments below.