Shading

Im not sure Ill answer this correctly, but my BEST advise I can offer you is to get your hands on some Josh Carlton DVD’s. He can shade like there is no tomorrow and its pretty simple how he does it. He doesnt lay out 20 caps full of black diluted down to zero, rather if he is doing solid black then he works the solids, after that to go a shade lighter he just simply dips into the water once and its cut 50%, dips again and its cut 75% and so on until he is pretty much using just the water with a tiny bit of black…thats how he shades. Ive tried this and its pretty simple and seems to be pretty effective all in all.
Its hard to describe how to shade, its just technique and what works, getting smoothness in shading takes time and practice, and thats more advice, practice it often, and practice it a lot.

When shading first of all I will hardly ever use a round shader. I almost always opt for a mag configuration. That being said I can get pretty much every shade I.need by using 3 different values. Solid black in one cap 3 drops of black and the rest witch hazel in the second, and the same for the third but with only 1 drop of black. The technique I THINK you are describing is the way I shade. except I work from light to dark. Using circular motions I will shade all the.lightest areas with my lightest wash value. Then in the darker areas will do the same with the medium overlapping the lighter shading a bit to blend it. You can affect the shade you get with e each value by how many passes you make with your circular motions. Lastly I go in and basically low-light with the solid black overlapping the medium value slightly to make a gradient. Hope this helped at all. Sorry if it didnt. Wish I could make it a bit more concise. Good luck!

While searching on the net, I found a method for shading a tattoo. First start the design with base color then make a very light work with gray color. Then use the dark black shading at a particular spot. Then try with blue color or lighter blue. Then control the rhythm of the tattoo gun.

You should be buying and using grey wash in premade sets. Grey wash always goes in darker than the way it heals, so going from light to dark can get tricky since the areas that you want black may not heal that way since you have already gone over every area with a light wash, then maybe a little more, then medium, and then wait… Everything looks dark now. Also over-working the skin becomes an issue since you are going over everything repeadedly. When you are finished lining, begin by doing the areas that you are sure you want black first. Working from dark to light seems completely ass backwards since it is usually the opposite of the way most people draw. But atleast get the darkest tones in first, then start blending in your lighter tones.