Ink Master Finalist Critiques a Neo-Traditional Black & Grey Tattoo

Before you watch it, one thing.

The hardest tattoo in the world to judge honestly is your own. Your hand made it, so the gap between what you pictured and what actually healed is the one thing you can't quite see. The eye that catches that gap takes years of looking at other artists' work to build.

Here's a small tell to listen for in this critique. When something on a piece reads "off" to everyone but you can't say what, that's his read at work. The fix is almost never inspiration. It's diagnosis. Watch this one with your own work in mind.

Gian critiques a neo-traditional black and grey tattoo: a lady-head set inside a dagger, leaf background, on the back of the tricep. Then he walks through exactly what he'd change.

The eyes are where his read starts. The common mistake here is tattooing lower eyelashes coming off the bottom lid. Eyes don't actually do that, so the piece reads "off" to everyone looking at it and obvious to almost no one. The fix is a single soft line under the eye, no bottom lashes. From there, scale: the piece is sized too small for the detail it's carrying, so the elements compete instead of breathe. Sizing it up lets the composition open up.

It would have been nicer to leave more open skin on the face. The face is the focal point of this tattoo, so it needs to be brighter against a darker background. A little less shading there lets it separate cleanly from the leaves. Gian works the other direction toward the same fix: pushing more solid black into the leaves builds the background contrast the piece is missing.

This is the read that's almost impossible to run on your own work. It usually takes another trained eye to point at the exact spot.