Practice vs. Real skin

[TexasPT]

Which is easier to work with? I feel like it is real skin that is easier. I don’t have much experience (one tattoo) to go off of. I was wondering what those of you with a bit more experience think.

Mark

[imported_canvasyou]

i dont have much experience with the fake skin! sorry!!

[KitchenWizard]

I don’t have any experience with fake skin, as my first tattoos were done on myself, then friends and family, so I never had to use it. I have heard that the fake skin is tougher to work than real skin, and someone who is practiced at fake skin, will have a ‘heavy hand’ when it comes to working real skin. Accordingly, grapefruit skin is too soft, and the pressure which would be perfect on a person, is too much for the fruit… My advice is to tattoo your own thighs and friends and family for practice, and ignore the substitutes all together :)

[TexasPT]

@KitchenWizard wrote:

I don’t have any experience with fake skin, as my first tattoos were done on myself, then friends and family, so I never had to use it. I have heard that the fake skin is tougher to work than real skin, and someone who is practiced at fake skin, will have a ‘heavy hand’ when it comes to working real skin. Accordingly, grapefruit skin is too soft, and the pressure which would be perfect on a person, is too much for the fruit… My advice is to tattoo your own thighs and friends and family for practice, and ignore the substitutes all together :)

Thanks…that is kind of what I thought. I covered an old tattoo on my upper thigh this weekend…had a rough time with it. I’ll be fixing the cover up when it heals. :) Good practice to see what can go wrong I guess.

[KitchenWizard]

@TexasPT wrote:

@KitchenWizard wrote:

I don’t have any experience with fake skin, as my first tattoos were done on myself, then friends and family, so I never had to use it. I have heard that the fake skin is tougher to work than real skin, and someone who is practiced at fake skin, will have a ‘heavy hand’ when it comes to working real skin. Accordingly, grapefruit skin is too soft, and the pressure which would be perfect on a person, is too much for the fruit… My advice is to tattoo your own thighs and friends and family for practice, and ignore the substitutes all together :)

Thanks…that is kind of what I thought. I covered an old tattoo on my upper thigh this weekend…had a rough time with it. I’ll be fixing the cover up when it heals. :) Good practice to see what can go wrong I guess.

Yeah, in theory, practice materials sound like a great idea, ie learning how to do it, without scratching anyone up, but learning to put clean lines on a flat piece of rubber which doesn’t move, or a soft and near spherical piece of fruit, is still quite different to tattooing a person… Just because someone knows how to drive an automatic car, that doesn’t mean they can drive stickshift, or can get behind the wheel of a Kenner big rig and drive it across the country, and that’s how I would compare practice materials to flesh: Same basic techniques, but it still needs learning specifically. Stick with it though, and either tattooing your thighs, or willing volunteers who know your capabilities (don’t try and run before you can walk :D ) really is the best way to go. After you’ve got a few under your belt, you’ll have the techniques down, and it’s then just that ongoing voyage of growth and development in learning new techniques :) And yes, making mistakes (on yourself :D ) is the best way to learn. Perfect results only teach a person to expect perfection each time, and they then don’t know what to do if something goes wrong :)

[Sabine2602]

Pigskin gets hard…

I tried a bigger piece on pigskin but when I was in the middle of the tattoo with coloring it was already very hard to get the needles in. Especially when you use a light source, the temperature it brings makes the skin smelly and useless. Its like a thick leather jacket. Stretching pigskin makes my hands get hurt after a while, another negative point. :(
So for now when I want to work on pigskin I choose small tattoos. When finished I simply hold the piece into very warm water – can bend the skin again to see if there are any bad spots where no color went in or to check the lines – just to see what I’ve done.

[Atchitol]

A friend told me about spaghetti squash. I liked it compared to oranges, grapefruits. But nothing like putting the hurt on yourself. Never tried pigskin tho… Probably for the better I would make a pigskin tattoo mask and go frighten people!

[Viper65]

Personally, a hog ear is my favorite by far. I never had any problems with them at all….
I am going to try out some of the practice skins though just to see how i like them and such.

[TexasPT]

hey Viper, Inkcraft.biz has the best I’ve found so far. Softer than most and it even has straps if you want to attach it at weird angles to practice.

Mark

[Viper65]

Mark..I got a question, I have a few of them, probably the cheapies…..but i notice when i did work on them the ink was like very faint..(i guess thats the way i would put it…). Have you had this experience? Oh, im using decent quality outline ink, its nice and black in skin so i dont know whats up with the skins or just me.????

[Tarantula]

The colours are faint? I have the same problem on plastic skins, the cheap thin ones that is never used the thicker double sided ones. As they’re plastic the colour tends to fade when you wash them off, the best way I’ve found to keep colour in better is cleaning them with vaseline.

[TexasPT]

@Viper65 wrote:

Mark..I got a question, I have a few of them, probably the cheapies…..but i notice when i did work on them the ink was like very faint..(i guess thats the way i would put it…). Have you had this experience? Oh, im using decent quality outline ink, its nice and black in skin so i dont know whats up with the skins or just me.????

The ones that are a harder rubber I had that issue. Colors didn’t look right. Almost like tattooing someone with a dark tan. Never faint…just darkened. The ones I got for inkcraft.biz were a very pale color and soft and everything on there came out pretty much the right color. Maybe just a shade lighter than normal.

[Author]

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