 Tattoo Warrior Season 1 begins in May. I've chosen six amazing artists to compete against each other so they can showcase their best work. Right, the gorilla here. I'm a tattooer out of Atlanta, Georgia. What's up, you guys? This is Joseph Cabello from Tulare, California, representing Body Art Gallery. Hey, what's up, everyone? My name is Thomas Salsito. Hi, my name is Jacob Locaz. Christian Navarro. I'm the artist, Moet. No drama. No category. It's just amazing tattoos. Winner will be taking home $5,000. Who do you think is going to take it? I've been competing my whole life. So I have an opportunity to compete in this contest as an adult. More than excited to participate. In the last two years, I hit the road, traveled across the country to many conventions and took home many trophies. Having been tattooing in 16 years, I need to find ways to push myself to go further and push past any barriers that I've created for myself. Which is why I'm excited to join this competition, to compete against other dope artists and to really test my skills on a competitive level. I can't wait to see what this journey is going to be like, where it's going to take me. And I'm super excited to be part of this competition and showcase my artwork. No category. It's just amazing artists going ahead to have amazing tattoos. See you soon, tattoo warriors. Okay, here we go. I'm currently working on this full sleeve. And I've been super busy lately, so I haven't been able to post on YouTube. But this right here, it's a sleeve that I cannot wait to share with everyone. The meaning behind this project has so much meaning. My client has an amazing story. And I feel like he's going to be sharing the whole entire story with this project. We call this project the Warrior of the Garden. And it definitely ties to him, his childhood, the way he came to the United States. All the struggles he had and how successful he is right now and how his past influenced his future. So I just can't wait to show you guys this project. It's going to be insane. But as of right now, what I'm going to do is show you guys a specific part of this project that I'm going to go in depth and do a tutorial on how I'm going to execute it the way I'm going to do it, the needle selection, the voltage and all that. As many of you know, I specialize in cover ups and I do a lot of texture pieces, a lot of statues and everything has to do with true grays. And it's been so long the last time I've done a black and gray project. But for this project, I had to do it because everything was done with true grays. But the face had to be done differently. That way I was able to separate it from the Hanya mask. I needed the face to have its own personality. So that's why I decided to do this project with a drop system. Now I'm going to demonstrate the way I'm going to do this part of the cheekbone here or this part of the face just to kind of go over the way I did this. And the one thing I'm going to be doing, am I recording? I swear if I was, I was going to say no. So the way I'm going to do this part of the face is with my 13 curve mask and I'm running my machine at a 6 right now. I bumped it up a little bit more just so it allows me to do smoother shading. And the drop system that I'm doing is on my large ink cap. I did 10 drops and I filled it up with water. It's going to be, it's super cool because I feel like it's like training wheels. Or what is it? No, not training wheels. It's muscle memory. Muscle memory. It's like muscle memory. Like I haven't done the drop system technique in probably three to four years but as soon as I started doing the face, the portrait, it's like I never stopped doing it. So since none of you have seen me do the drop system technique, it's the perfect time for me to go over it or the way I do it. So if you're struggling with doing portraits, this might help you. Now I'm going to start here on the nose area. And very, just on the surface of the skin, I'm barely brushing the skin so I won't irritate it. Feathering the skin. And it's exactly how I remember which is not rushing it, taking your time. And building up those tones. But as you can see, I'm barely brushing the skin because I think one of the things that a lot of people do go through when they're doing the drop system is the skin starts getting swollen because of how many layers you're putting on top. So that is why I am running it at six because I feel comfortable with my hand speed to be able to build those tones without making the skin swollen. And I'm going to be using this tone for the whole thing. I am confident that the tone, the way this tone is going to heal is going to be perfect. Look at that. You can already see how soft this is coming out. I'm going to go under the eye here and leave like a little tiny highlight between the eyelid and the drop shadow under the eye. The eye bag, I believe. And just leave that little highlight because I'm going to do a white highlight on it to make it look glossy. And like I said, if you're struggling with this, this is just one way of doing it. There are so many different techniques that you can use to achieve the same shade. A little bit of different, but if you're struggling, you should try this and hopefully it helps you out. So as a reminder, I did 10 drops on a large ink cap and I filled it out with water. Now I'm going to feather in the edge of the cheek here. That way it doesn't finish too harsh. It has more like a natural look. The way I put it together is we had a consultation and he told me about the concept that he wanted to use, which is Bushido. And it has eight virtues. I can't say that. Eight virtues, virtues, virtues. And I got to thinking and I said, I don't know much about the culture. So what I did, I booked them three weeks in advance so I can have those three weeks to really study and learn the culture. And I ended up learning the folktales about the Hanya Mask, the Oni Mask, the Bushido code, their religion, what they used to practice. That really helped me a lot. Those three weeks really helped me a lot to really practice and learn about the culture before customizing because there is no way I was going to be able to put this project together without having knowledge and without knowing the culture. Because the last thing I wanted is to put two things that didn't belong together and that didn't make sense. Because his story is just so inspirational. That's another word I can't say. Inspirational. Entrepreneur. Those words I can't say. You know what's one sentence that I can't say together? I can't say speed and limit in a sentence. I have to separate the two words. Speed and limit. Like if I say... I've got to concentrate. You've got to go the speed limit. See what I'm saying? I say speed instead of speed. It's crazy. It's crazy. I hate it. But because his story has so much meaning, I could not afford to put things that didn't make sense together. So it took me three weeks and then I verified with him and everything checked out. So that made me really, really connected to this project so that is why I'm taking my time. I'm making sure that I... I executed the way it's supposed to be executed so nothing looks like one single tone. And I'm almost done with this project. I feel like I'm going to post it in the next two weeks when I'm done editing because this is four days. Four days full of work about... Well, maybe like... We're probably 50 hours in. About 50 hours in. So I have a lot of footage to edit. And look at that. That is just blending in super nice. Not rushing anything. So just knowing the culture and being familiar with it just definitely helps you out so much to customize. And that's something that I encourage all artists to do is to customize, learn the culture, learn a little bit. You don't have to fully dive in, you know, but at least gain more knowledge. And that's going to help you out so much to customize because it's going to allow you to think deeper and customize more uniquely. I see a lot of... And I don't mean just go on Google and say what was Buddha known for what was the Hanya mask known for? Go deeper than that. What was the folktale? What's the history? Do they have different stories behind it? Do they have different traditions? What is it signified? What year? All those little things matter to help you out to customize a lot better. Because I've seen a lot of, for example, in that culture I see a lot of artists just put together different gods that don't go together. For example, the biggest one that I see is when they put an Aztec culture with a pyramid that has only one temple on the top but they don't go together because that's a Mayan temple. It's a Mayan pyramid. It's called Chichen Itza. But a lot of artists believe that that is an Aztec pyramid but it's not. The actual one is called the Templo Mayor. So that little mistake is one of those things that if you knew, you could have customized it precisely and come up with a better design. Now I'm getting closer to the nose here. The highlight of it is getting brighter because the tones are making it glow because they're on the right spots. As you can see, I'm almost like cross-hatching just a little bit. I said it right, right? Cross-hatching. Damn! I'm getting good. Thank you. And I'm using the same tone to really make this happen. I'm just building it. But as you can see, the skin is not getting irritated because I'm treating it very gently. And I'm keeping the same pace, I'm keeping the same speed, I'm keeping the same pressure, the same voltage, the same distance with the needle depth. So all those little things can definitely help you out with your portraits and just being patient. There is no way you can rush a portrait. And it's super satisfying, honestly. I got to say that it's super satisfying to be able to go back to the DRAB system because I'm always doing texture. So something a little bit different, you know, it gets me excited, but I don't know what I'm going to do next just because I need that special project that brings this out of me. And this one was it. And it was the perfect choice because now I can see where the Hanya mask starts and where the phase begins. But those little things can make a big difference on your projects. But I didn't come up with this in a matter of, you know, hours. Like this took me two to three days to really figure it out and see how I was going to approach it. But yeah, like I said, we have over 50 hours on this and we're almost done. I think we got another tent to go. Another tent to go and then we're done with the full sleeve and I'ma post it. It's going to finish up the nose here and call it. Look at that softness. That is beautiful. That is so crazy. There you go. If you have a technique that works out for you, drop it on the comments. Let us know how you would approach this portrait and what would you do differently. And hopefully some of you can benefit from this video, you know what I mean? And if you do a portrait using one of the techniques that you learned here or on the comments section, post it and tag me on Instagram. I'll make sure to check it out.