Ep. 71: Everything White Ink Tattoos

White ink has been around as long as I have been tattooing, but I am getting way more questions about it in the last few years than ever before. 

In this episode I will answer all of the most frequently asked questions I get about white ink tattoos: how white ink works, why people may want to get them, other applications of white ink in tattoo art, including white outline tattoos, who they are best for, how they age and more. 

If you've been curious about white ink, I am so glad you found your way to this episode. 

You can connect with me, Micah Riot, as well as see my tattoo art on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/micahriot/

Micah's website is www.micahriot.com
The podcast is hosted on Buzzsprout but truly lives in the heart of Micah's website at:
https://www.micahriot.com/ink-medicine-podcast/

Transcript

Micah Riot: 0:23

Hello darlings, Micah Riot here with another episode of Ink Medicine Podcast. It is May 10th 2024. Today we're going to be talking about white ink, everything about it how it works, what it looks like, why people want it, why somebody might not want it, what type of skin it looks best in and how it ages. I do get a fair amount of questions about white ink and I just thought I would put all my knowledge in one place. But first a tiny little bit of personal news, because I believe that you guys want to hear it, so I'll tell you. I have finalized the details of my trip to Chicago. I will in fact be at Butterfat Studios. I will be there for five days. I have three days full and two days still not, but it already feels like it's very much worth my time.

Micah Riot: 1:19

I'm very excited to go meet folks, meet other tattoo artists, see a different shop, see how people do things in a different shop. So much of the time when you work alone, especially as an artist, you feel like you are in this little bubble and the world is so small, and that's not a feeling I really like. I like an expansive worldview, I like the feeling of belonging and the feeling of having community and friends all around, everywhere, all around the world, and I feel like when I connect with other tattoo artists especially on the podcast, because I don't do a ton of guest spotting I feel like I get closer and closer to that expansive worldview of feeling. I have friends in many places. I think I've mentioned this, but I'm so excited to meet Esther Garcia. I've been following her work since I was a baby tattoo artist. I love her philosophy on tattooing. I love the way that she approaches it. I love her color tests on melanin skin. She's been doing these beautiful lavender color tests on brown skin because purple and brown are opposites on the color spectrum. Gorgeous, and just what a cool idea. She's an absolute legend and I can't wait to meet her. I will also get to meet James Olivia Chu Hillman, who was on the podcast last fall. I did two episodes with them because we could not shut up. We talked for so long and it was so fun, and they are still currently my teacher in a relational skills workshop. That's been nine months long and we're coming to the end of it and we have become more like friends and when I go to Chicago I'm going to meet them, hang out with them and tattoo them.

Micah Riot: 3:13

Hopefully, I'm excited, very excited for all those things. It's going to be really nice to just be in a different city, wander around, explore, be by myself for a week and just do my thing, get out of my routine. I used to love traveling alone, but I haven't done it in really in years and it's time to go back to some of my things that I used to love that were interrupted by various things, including my marriage from a few years ago and also the pandemic. And, on that note, if you have things you used to do, that you used to love and you haven't done them in a long time, do them again. You will love them again. It will bring joy to your life. It will bring meaning to your life. It will help you feel more expansive about your life, like your life is bigger. It doesn't matter that you haven't done it in years. Just do it again, do it again. And now on to the episode.

Micah Riot: 4:14

Okay, white ink. Some people love it, some people hate it. Maybe you don't know what it looks like. Maybe you don't know what it looks like when you see somebody out in public and the marks you see on their body are thin white lines. That could be a white ink tattoo. Essentially, white ink as a line on the skin. In fairly light skin looks like a scar. It's lighter than the skin, it's denser than the skin and it's fairly hard to notice from far away, but when you get close it's there. It's obvious. The way white ink tattoos work is the same way any tattoo works. It's inserted into the skin with a needle the tattoo needle just the same way any other tattoo is inserted into the layers of the dermis. The skin holds onto the particles of the ink, kind of encapsulates them into a little sack and then they stay there for the rest of your life.

Micah Riot: 5:21

Does white ink fade faster? White ink has less contrast with the wearer's skin and so you're going to notice it fading more. I believe that all ink fades at about the same rate, although I have seen some old pieces missing oranges and yellows and still retaining their blacks and their blues and their greens and their reds. So I think it depends on the person how well they take care of their skin, if they use sunscreen, if they hang out in the sun a lot, if their skin tends to get a lot of sun damage through the year. Also, which arm, if it's on an arm, like if it's your driving arm, and it's always out the window and it's always getting sun exposure on it. And honestly, I haven't seen enough white pieces come back after many years 10 years to really know from my own experience if white ink how it looks many, many, many years later. The people I know who have white ink tattoos, who I've known for a long time, they look just as fresh to me as they always have.

Micah Riot: 6:32

Why would people want to get white ink tattoos? So first let's talk about white only and then we'll talk about white as an element in other tattoos that have color or black. So why people might want to get white tattoos is because they want to have tattoos, visible tattoos, maybe tattoos on their face or their neck or their hands, their arms, their chest, but they don't want them to be really obvious. They want them to be fairly subtle. Other people like the look of scarification, but they don't actually want to get scarification. It's a much more intense experience. There's cutting involved and tattooing is, you know, just more palatable in our society. Or maybe they don't care about the subtlety of it, they just really like the look of it. It can look very otherworldly, very ethereal, absolutely beautiful.

Micah Riot: 7:27

I have long been interested in playing with white ink. For other people it doesn't really work so much on my skin. My skin's a little bit too green, too yellow, too olivey to have white show up on my skin. But I've been playing with it on other people now for basically my entire career and I I think it's great. But I also I love alternative tattoo styles. I love to experiment. I don't take longevity quite as seriously as some tattoo artists do. And that brings me to my next point is white ink.

Micah Riot: 8:04

Tattoos, sadly, work best in very light skin. So people will sometimes approach me with an assumption that white ink and lighter inks look best on dark skin. That is not the case. It would seem to be so if the ink was sitting on top of the skin. The way that, like a dark skin person, a deeper skin person looks amazing and bright colors and bright yellows and fuchsias, um, in white, like white makeup on a on a face that has a melanin skin. So beautiful.

Micah Riot: 8:37

But tattoos sit underneath your skin, so your own pigment is a filter through which you then view the ink. The skin grows over the tattoo particles, ink particles and obscure them If you have melanin in your skin, it will obscure the ink particles and you won't be able to see the lighter colors. So the deeper the skin tone, the less light colors are able to be seen through it. The less light colors are able to be seen through it. This is why to get a higher contrast tattoo on very deep skin tones you really wanna go with basically black, blocky, thick, contrasting, graphic black shapes. Or if the skin is kind of more medium tone, you can definitely get color into melanin skin. Just sort of depends on your specific, the shade your skin, the texture of your skin.

Micah Riot: 9:32

Like sometimes I'm very much surprised like I have a client, also friend, who is half black and half eastern european and we are working on a very colorful piece on her back and the colors look fantastic in her skin. I really can't be sure back and the colors look fantastic in her skin. I really can't be sure what it is about specifically her and her skin. I would say her skin is on the like, maybe medium, like lighter to medium. I'm sorry I don't have the right language for describing this person's skin tone, but she's not white, she does not look white, she does not pass as white, her skin is not light and the colors are just glowing in her skin. We have yellows, we have pinks, we have light greens. They look fantastic in her skin. It's kind of the first time I have noticed. I have come upon somebody who has melanin skin and the colors are just. You know, I don't think I've seen brighter color in people's skin before. It's gorgeous, which is not to say that having black tattoos is not gorgeous. I love black tattoos on deeper skin tones. I think it's so elegant, it's so beautiful.

Micah Riot: 10:43

Anyway, we're getting away from the topic of white ink. In conclusion, white ink does not work for melanated skin, does not work for deeper skin tones, and I have skin that is not that melanated, but it is melanated enough that I cannot have white ink. It just doesn't work. It doesn't show up. I've tried and that's okay. You know it's not not everything's for everybody, but I am happy to experiment with white ink on lighter skin tones. The more transparent you are, the more translucent you are. The more you're like Irish you know, kind of like Irish rosy, neutral toned skin, like blue veins you can really see the veins through their skin more the white will show up in your skin. So now let's talk about white ink tattoos versus white in your tattoos. We just discussed the white ink tattoos. That just involves all white.

Micah Riot: 11:42

Mostly people do them in line work, but sometimes you see thicker elements in them and like little filled in areas. I probably wouldn't do a whole big swatch of just white. I think that white can heal uneven skin, can be a little different from like spot to spot, and it can also over time kind of like get a yellowish or brownish tint. So you know, like a big swath of it would also be quite experimental, like not that I wouldn't do it, I'd do it, but I don't usually do it since I can't predict the results quite as well.

Micah Riot: 12:18

The other way I have been playing with white ink is to use it as an outline. Sometimes it's an outline outside of the outline, like I've done black pieces or pieces that were quite dark and deep and had a lot of shading in it, and then I'd put a white outline all around the entire piece to give it a little glow, sometimes to set it off against something in the background so it doesn't meld with the background. I've also been using white as just its own outline. There's several pieces of mine on social media with that idea in mind. So in one situation it was a hip piece and it was, I think, the very first time I ever did this technique, and it was, I think the very first time I ever did this technique and I had been seeing some Korean artists use yellow and also light blue and teal as outlines and I was like, great, I love that. Look, I'm also going to try it with more organic shapes and with white.

Micah Riot: 13:11

And so I drew this sort of flower on this woman's hip and then I outlined all of it in white Using a fairly thick visible line I think it was maybe like seven or nine with these very like long kind of spindly petals, leaves and petals that were encompassing her whole hip, kind of holding fanning out over her entire hip, and we had her heal, the white. The reason why I didn't want to go in with color right away is so that I didn't dirty the white. I wanted the white to remain as clean and crisp as possible and when you have a fresh, open tattoo, like you did, a bunch of light color, and the skin is still weeping right, like you just did it, it's not closed up yet If you are wiping dark colors into it. As you tattoo another part of the tattoo, it will get dirty. So, especially white, very susceptible to getting dirty and healing that like gray wash or whatever color gets in there as part of the tattoo, and so I did not want that to happen and I let her heal the white. It also took us quite a long time to get all the white outlining in.

Micah Riot: 14:26

When she came back we started very carefully with a very small needle filling in the color, kind of doing these like bright blocks of color to create really the shape and the feel and the vibrance of the flower. There's all kinds of pinks, magentas, uh, some yellow, some green, I think a little bit of teal in there, um, some red in there too. It's really very, um, eye-catching, very lovely to look at. Bright, it's quite bright, and yeah, the resulting look is so interesting, so otherworldly. The white outline kind of gives it this ethereal feel and then the colors um make like just bring a smile to your face. It's, it's quite cool. It's almost like the flower looks more alive because the white is more realistic, almost even like nothing in the world has a black outline on it but white it's just light, like there's light behind it, so it almost looks like it's alive more because of the lack of black outline and the white outline around it instead.

Micah Riot: 15:36

And another way that people use white in tattoos is just to give things highlights. You'll oftentimes see just really anything, any tattoo, even if it's like, you know, hair on a face, like there's not hair on a face, face you know a girl face, a pretty face, and then there's beautiful long hair and like to give it that shine. People will use white as like little dots or little lines to create that illusion of like to give it that shine. People will use white as like little dots or little lines to create that illusion of like light hitting it and it being shiny. Or you know, if you're doing berries, there's usually a white highlight on that, like any kind of fruit, but really anything. You can use white on almost anything and make it pop a little bit more. And you know, if this person's skin takes white, well, you'll get that little bit of an effect. It will give it like a little something extra.

Micah Riot: 16:23

And no, white highlights do not hurt more than the rest of the tattoo. It's just that you do them last because of what I was saying earlier. You don't want to get your white dirty and so you do it less after you've done all the black, all the shading, all the color. So people do think they hurt more because it's the very end of the tattoo. You've been sitting there. This is like the last thing you do. The artist has been wiping at you, you're irritated, you're hungry, you're done. So that's why it hurts more. But usually if the artist wants to do the white highlights, just let them. It's going gonna look cooler, believe me it will.

Micah Riot: 17:02

Another way I've used white ink is to clean up fuzz around a blown out tattoo. Say, I'm touching up an old tattoo or I'm maybe covering something up and there's a little bit of under skin fuzz in the skin from like some blowout from before usually blow out. That's from blocking or coloring. It kind of looks like a bruise under the skin. From like some blowout from before, usually blowout. That's from black ink or color ink. It kind of looks like a bruise under the skin and oftentimes, when tattoos are 10 years old, they're just kind of fuzzy around the edges. And so if I'm cleaning something up for somebody, I'm redoing it, retouching it, helping it to look fresher, just kind of like giving it a little refurbishing. I will sometimes use white on those edges to just give it like a crisper outline, a crisper edge.

Micah Riot: 17:45

If you are a tattoo artist, one tip for you to make sure you remember is to always use a clean needle on your white. If your needle is dirty, if you've been working in color or in black and then you don't wash it out well enough, if you've been working in color or in black and then you don't wash it out well enough, if you still have remaining black ink in there, your white will turn gray. So make sure you're either using a very fresh needle tip, you're replacing your tip to use your white, or you're cleaning it out very well, washing it out well, wiping it off on your paper towel until there's no black ink coming out. And the last thing is a question I get often is how does white ink age? And that is a variable answer. It's really hard to say, because each person's skin is different and the way they take care of their skin is different and the amount of sunscreen they wear is different.

Micah Riot: 18:36

I think we do know that sunscreen will help keep your ink looking fresher, brighter, for longer, and I think that applies to white ink as well, because sun will eat the pigment right out of your skin. If you sit in the park every day all summer long with no sunscreen, your tattoos will noticeably fade. So although I cannot tell you with all with real certainty how it's going to age, I can tell you that sunscreen will help. So wear a sunscreen on your tattoos and your other body parts, especially your face. But you know, in general I think some people say it can get kind of yellow, it can get a little bit brown. It doesn't usually go fully yellow or fully brown. It stays fairly light, maybe like creamy kind of a creamy quality to it on your skin. And you know, I still think it looks cool and I think it's worth getting. It's worth thinking about. If you have the kind of skin, that is an obvious choice for it, of course, and if you don't, we can still try it.

Micah Riot: 19:38

You know I do color tests for people sometimes, and sometimes it's about looking to see how colors will look after healed on melanated skin or skin that has a lot of eczema issues, like it depends. You know, it's just like someone has really sensitive skin and hasn't done well with color before. You know, it's just like someone has really sensitive skin and hasn't done well with color before. I'll also oftentimes test white to see how that shows up on their skin, and that, I believe, is all I have to say about white ink. I might have missed something, I might have to make an addendum, but as of now, this seems pretty comprehensive.

Micah Riot: 20:20

I hope it satisfied your curiosity. I hope that helped you think about your future tattoos and in a more expansive way, and I hope it brought you some clarity on questions you might've had before and maybe given you a little bit of knowledge. If you are a tattoo artist and looking for more tips and I hope you're having a beautiful day you know what I'm gonna ask myself. What's a small thing that's been making me happy lately, and I'll tell you what it's actually been drinking water. I'm trying to get my water in throughout my day, just really putting an effort in, and it makes me happy to drink water, to have access to clean, delicious, beautiful, safe water. Not everybody in the world is so lucky and it is something that's been making me a little bit more happy lately. Thank you.