4d • Tattoo Exercises
Level 1 Practice
This doesn’t mean this is for beginners only.
At Crook’s Tattoo Studio, I once mentored an artist who tattooed for 9 years.
He was comfortably doing black and grey tattoos. The problem? He was mostly self taught and worked with mostly intuition.
He wasn’t confident with line work, even 9 years in. His lack of line control effected his ability to do finer details in realism with his liner.
Level 1 includes the finer details. The things that contribute to clean lines and smooth shading.
A typical mistake is to practice doing designs on skin without identifying and practicing the things that contribute to clean lines and smooth shading.
What I teach, is to learn and practice these contributing factors before moving onto advanced designs.
You wouldn’t run before you walk. These exercises are teaching you to put one foot informs of another like a professional would.
Would you rather 10 practice sheets of designs, full of shakey lines and choppy shading?
Or would you rather 10 practice sheets of just straight lines and shapes filled with smooth shading?
I know one seems more exciting than the other, but the second exercise of lines and shapes will build skills that carry into the most advanced tattoos.
Without it, you’ll always feel limited by your skills and understanding.
Then, when we begin to learn the types of shadows and what tones to use, we have the technical control to tattoo as we mean to.
Download and stencil these templates for practice and post your work for feedback from me. You could even trace the templates with pen to practice hand steadiness.
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Level 1 Practice
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