LINES!!

[TexasPT]

Does anyone have any tips on how to put in a clean line. This seems to be my biggest struggle so far.

I’ve heard that the machine should be held at 90 degrees and I’ve heard 45. Any ideas?

I seem to have trouble seeing the needle…I drag the tube so I get depth right…my disposables are black. Should I go white? (with black ink would it really matter?) Do I really need to see it, or can I just use center tip on the tube for reference?

I’ve tried hanging the needle out. On me, I can do it because I can feel the depth in my own thigh. On other people I tend to not be consistent enough with depth and the lines suffer. I’ll get 1/2 lines and bloodlines.

Does anyone “lube” their drawing hand to have it slide easier? thinking I may need to try that.

How often do you dip in ink? I think I try to go too long …that’s an easy fix, really.

Thanks for any and all input. I guess I am just looking to hear what has worked for you guys. I’m not hopeless on this but I need/want to be better and would appreciate any words of wisdom or stories of what didn’t work. I’m one of those want to be good yesterday kind of guys. :)

Mark

[Tarantula]

What problems are you having with lines? Is it just long lines you have trouble with? I always work off the tips, with a nice thin coating of vaseline the excess ink kinda goes back up the tube and I can see how my lines are going. Riding the tube I always found I was getting ink everywhere and wiping half my design away cleaning up.
Make sure you’re pushing the needles back against the tube when you work, pulling machine backwards can leave a wobbly line, if you need to work down a line just flip the machine around.
I was told one time that I had too many elastic bands on my machines (2), you need the bands to keep the needles back against the tube but too many (or too tight) can have the opposite affect, pulling the needle bar back and pushing the needles out, this is why some people put a slight bend in the needle bar. Too mush tension on the needle bar causes friction and means your back spring has to work much harder (back spring has to move the whole abar setup,the grommet and the needles with enough force to puncture the skin) so sometimes you may end up turning the volts up on your machine which makes the whole thing vibrate more remember from Canvas’ book the volts dont change the speed of the machine just the ammount of power. Also some cheaper machine frames dont seem to absorb any vibration at all
Your machines will dictate how you line, we all tune our machines to run how we like them, to match our hand speed etc.
I have used some vaseline on my glove before to get a better slide on the skin for long lines, just remember that it can also slip to the side! Also some people say that using too much vaseline with latex gloves destroys them…
Everytime you take the machine out of the skin dip in the ink pot.
As far as consistency with working off the needle tips goes practice makes perfect, and its better to have lighter lines than to go in too deep, too deep and you may get blowouts which wont be pretty if it didn’t go in so well you can go over it again.

Best thing I ever did for my lines (which still aren’t perfect I might add :( ) was build my own machines, drop the volts and slow down my hand ( a lot of the “bitty” lines I was putting in was due to me trying to rush to get the outline in)

I hope some of this helps, these are some of the tips I’ve been given in the past, I’m sure other people will have other techniques. I stopped tattooing real skin for a while and used practice skins and pig skins. The really thin cheap practice skins are awesome for learning to work off the needle tips by the way, they’re thin enough that you’ll soon know if you’ve gone too deep by the engraved table top :)

[Atchitol]

Good info here thanks!!

[TexasPT]

Thanks, tarantula. Amazing info.

Mark

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