 How's everybody doing? Welcome back to my channel. This week, I spent two days with an artist to teach him how to do a cover-up. So with that being said, let's get this day started. Let's go! I can tell you I was ready to kind of start learning something that I had already kind of had an idea from. I've seen Kevin's videos before. I don't know, I was pretty comfortable. Honestly, I was pretty comfortable. He's a cool dude, you know? On day one, I wanted him to really understand what he takes to do a cover-up, especially on do's and don'ts, needle selection, voltage, skin complexion and everything that would help him out to execute a good cover-up. Do's and don'ts in a cover-up. Before you even get a client in, you have to make sure that what you're getting into is something that you can accomplish. Like you said earlier, sometimes you buy more than you can choose. So having that knowledge of when to get that client in is when it becomes important, especially for me, since I get clients at a state, I have to make sure that I can execute it. I'm not about to fly in a client and whenever he gets here, I'm like, oh, this is actually more complicated than I thought, I can do it. He has tried to do a few cover-ups in the past, so I'm excited to see the difference between before the seminar and after the seminar. I didn't expect to feel extremely nervous the second day I did, but first day I knew that he was just going to be chill about it and you're just going to go over everything. It's all part of the experience. This is all part of the experience, getting a cover-up or getting in with you, because at the end of the day, you are providing a service that's going to last a lifetime for that client, you know? For you is a one-day thing, but for the client, it's a lifetime. So it starts at the consultation, get to know the client. If you want the client to listen to you, when you're about to customize something, you've got to make them trust you. The fact that this dude kind of has like a simple setup whenever it comes to his inks and stuff like that, I was not expecting that. As artists, we go through a lot of hurdles, you know? So I think that that's one of the reasons why I wanted to come in with Kevin, you know? Because sometimes seminars can have like a breakthrough and that's exactly what happened. I want to keep it, so now I'm just going to dip it once. One, just to reload. And no matter what I do, it's going to keep it. See that? It doesn't change it. This is 15 drops, right? Just let it go. As you get closer to the other side, start separating the spray bowl technique. Yes, now the beginning is a little bit tighter. Towards the end, you start separating and a little bit more. No matter what, it's a risk, you know what I'm saying? I could tell you I was nervous from the night before. I kind of had a tough time, kind of like, you know, getting good sleep and stuff like that. But no, I can be ready. I have been working as hard as I can whenever it comes to, you know, just the tattoos that I've been doing and stuff like that, you know? I always like to step out of my comfort zone. Today is day two and I'm going to coach him through the whole entire cover-up to make sure he executes it the right way. We stenciled both of them, kind of edited both of them. And, yeah, so right now it's about Don deciding what he wants to see on his leg. I can't wait to see what you want to see. Hey, that's always good. Ice, I really like it. The most important thing is having the eye, land. Somewhere in the eye of the octopus? Yeah, so the eye socket has to land here. So it's nice and dark in that area. Is that good stencil? Well, I'm looking at it. Even though we have the eye socket on the dark area, yeah, this is our highlight. So we don't want to mess with that touching this black area. So we need to pull the eye lower. So first thing I will start with, it would be, I will do the outline of the jaw so you won't lose that if you want to use the 14 or the 7. Just a simple one doesn't have to be too harsh. Okay. That way we don't lose the jaw because we want to start with the lip. Okay. The contrast of the lip. So you're going to start from the bottom? Yeah, exactly. So outline of the jaw, go with the conscious of the lip. This is like the perfect area to kind of warm up on how to loosen up your wrist. But I'll start with the dark area. Yeah, start with the dark area. I'm just going to see how it's pretty much the same thing. And remember not to follow any patterns. You have to be able to not fall into shapes, any patterns, any rhythm. It has to be all random. So that way you start creating all those little dots. It was a little rough from the beginning, whether it was the nerves or what not. But sometimes you do it. It's just like anything. You know, you kind of at some points feel like you want to give up maybe or you know, you're like maybe this isn't for me. But I just know how to kind of get out of those, you know, zones right away. I knew that it's just about keeping on. The first couple of hours I want to be next to him, coaching him through the whole entire thing. If he has any questions, I want to teach him how to move his hands, things to look out for and how to execute it. And you got to take advantage of these corners right here. You see that like this line right here is so sharp. So that that's the that's the areas that you got to take advantage of. And now since you already have the sharp areas, you can start doing the separated texture. Okay. But very lightly on that surface. That's your highlight. Okay. We just want to add everything they see on that reference, but in our reality, you don't need that. Yeah. Focus on the contrast first. Everything you see black and do that first. Okay. Sometimes some people are a certain way, you know, for the camera or for YouTube or for whatever, you know, and this guy is just the way that he is. Just a happy guy. You know what I'm saying? I can tell that, you know, negative vibes are not his way. He's all about just kind of being optimistic about your progress. He is not this guy when you come in here. I mean, obviously as an artist, when you have a lot of years of knowledge and you've kind of like had this profound experience on how you do your things, the skills that you have and stuff like that, you don't just want to be giving it to people that are not deserving. I feel in a way, I kind of prove to him that like I'm serious about it. And like a choice right now just because the black is doing so well that we've got to keep pushing that contrast. Okay. Yeah. So in this case right there, because now we're going into the highlight area, what we want to do is be more gentle so we don't compromise the highlight area. We're going to start on the bottom going from the darkest to the lightest. So I'm here, look at that. And with this, now I'm doing the scribble technique, but I'm not really taking it off the skin. So by doing the scribble technique on this situation, I'm overlapping that black so it can take over a little bit of those gaps and also create a different tone. As I'm doing this and as I'm getting closer to the highlight area, I start separating and I kind of wipe. I don't want to see how I'm doing. I like that. Getting more comfortable though for sure. This area right here right? Let's say that you go a little too, you go a little too bright. Do you just kind of boom dip it? Yeah. And just very lightly go with your black and that's going to give you a different contrast. Those lines that are going across here, that's going to be key because you can actually make those into wrinkles and it's going to help you out to cover it up a lot easier. Okay. Okay. So how would you do those with this gray? I would do it with black. So I would go, I would clean your needle into solid black and then that way it would allow you to make it sharp. I'm more of a hands-on guy, you know? So I was looking forward to the second day more, right? But the first day really does kind of set your mind in the right place to understand what you're going to come into, you know what I'm saying, the second day. He also not just teaches you about your skills, your technical skills, but he also teaches you about how to have that personality that stands out from others. I thought that was something that, man, you can apply that to anything in life. In a way he is teaching you about tattooing, but he's also teaching you about service. He's teaching you about how to be a better person. This is the part that, well, at the same time, the gray is kind of like the same color as the faded black, right? Exactly. Yeah, I mean, with that little corner doing grays, it's going to fall into place. It's going to really fall into place, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Okay. But stay away from this corner now and work on darker and darkening up this area. Because we're going to need that highlight. I think it's pretty good. I've got a lot to learn still. But it's definitely a new method that I'm enjoying. It's just kind of funny how you can connect a lot of things together. I guess you could say the experience that I already have to what this dude is teaching me or has taught me. It's just cool because I can already see how I'm going to be able to adapt to both ways over time. It makes me feel like I just learned something. It's like a profound experience that way. This is a little nerve-wracking in the beginning, and I was like, man, because you're so used to even stuff, you know what I'm saying? So it's not about just kind of like going everywhere. But I can seriously say that this is, it just feels more fun. Now, dude, I'm really happy, really happy with Debra. You definitely killed it. How do you feel? Oh, dude, honestly, I'm stoked. I'm stoked, man. I'm the cover-up that you were showing me to this big-ass jump. Yeah, it makes a difference. It's a big-ass jump. I'll be able to do a better job. Man, give me still some props, man. You're pretty proud as a teacher? Dude, I'm just proud of you, man. That's amazing. I only gave you the tools. You used them. That's the main thing here. The sad thing would have been, I gave you all the tools, and you didn't do the cover-up. That would have been sad as well, but you learned it within the three hours, so that's it. I'm really, really, really happy for him. I'm really proud of him. He put a lot of work in, and he was able to execute this cover-up, so now that he has all these tools and all this knowledge, I hope he puts it to use, and I can't wait to see his future projects.