Tattooing with your wrist vs. your shoulder

sheyd · 17 Nov 2020

So I’ve been apprenticing for about a week at a street shop, and I notice all the artists here tattoo with their wrist and/or fingers. Their lines are clean and consistent. I can make a clean line from my wrist easy, but I’ve been training myself to tattoo from shoulder because online a lot of professional tattooers say you should be tattooing from your shoulder, but they never say why.

What’s the pros of retraining your arm to move from your shoulder?

The first thing that came to mind is maybe future arthritis prevention? Idk

Cyberthrasher · 17 Nov 2020

You'll get much cleaner and more consistent results working with your shoulder/elbow. There will be times where using wrist/finger makes sense and can be done for smaller lines. But it's just one more thing to think about, "should I move my wrist or my shoulder for this next line". I write entire pages of calligraphy with shoulder movement. It can be done with even the smallest forms (I call it a shoulder nudge).

1.) your fingers don't move at a consistent depth. If your hand stays still and your fingers move the needle, you'll be either too shallow or far too deep at some point in the line.

2.) your wrist only has one single axis and one single radius. If you want to work on any line that doesn't match that exact circle, you're gonna move your elbow and shoulder to adjust. That's just setting you up for a flat spot.

3.) Out of all the joints on your limb, the shoulder is the ONLY one designed to move in all of the necessary directions. I include elbow when I mention it because when done right, you'll probably feel like it's just your elbow moving and your elbow will assist in moving front to back.

All those other guys, and plenty more out there, are able to do it because that's what they've always done. It's natural. Our bodies want to take the easy way out. But how much better would they be if they had learned how to move from the shoulder? You're just learning, so why not get ahead and learn that from the beginning?

sheyd · 17 Nov 2020

Cyberthrasher706 said:
You'll get much cleaner and more consistent results working with your shoulder/elbow. There will be times where using wrist/finger makes sense and can be done for smaller lines. But it's just one more thing to think about, "should I move my wrist or my shoulder for this next line". I write entire pages of calligraphy with shoulder movement. It can be done with even the smallest forms (I call it a shoulder nudge).

1.) your fingers don't move at a consistent depth. If your hand stays still and your fingers move the needle, you'll be either too shallow or far too deep at some point in the line.

2.) your wrist only has one single axis and one single radius. If you want to work on any line that doesn't match that exact circle, you're gonna move your elbow and shoulder to adjust. That's just setting you up for a flat spot.

3.) Out of all the joints on your limb, the shoulder is the ONLY one designed to move in all of the necessary directions. I include elbow when I mention it because when done right, you'll probably feel like it's just your elbow moving and your elbow will assist in moving front to back.

All those other guys, and plenty more out there, are able to do it because that's what they've always done. It's natural. Our bodies want to take the easy way out. But how much better would they be if they had learned how to move from the shoulder? You're just learning, so why not get ahead and learn that from the beginning?

These are really great points. Thanks so much for writing out all of this.
I was going to keep learning to control my shoulder, but this definitely solidified it even more. I’m going to specifically look up some calligraphy exercises to help me learn. If you know any good resources, I’d appreciate them!

Cyberthrasher · 17 Nov 2020

sheyd said:
These are really great points. Thanks so much for writing out all of this.
I was going to keep learning to control my shoulder, but this definitely solidified it even more. I’m going to specifically look up some calligraphy exercises to help me learn. If you know any good resources, I’d appreciate them!

Iampeth.com is run by one of the leading experts and he has some videos on whole arm movement. But it's mostly practice and lots of ovals

MalligaMallan · 18 Nov 2020

For anyone searching - it's iampeth.com not Lampeth.com ? (took me a couple of minutes to sort that out)

marked 4 life · 18 Nov 2020

DKJ · 18 Nov 2020

As Cybertrasher & Markked4life pointed out, the wrist is locked in a very narrow area when it comes to motion.
The elbow is not directly connected to your tool but it has complete control of movement.
Your hand should be only considered as a "tool holder". Keeping it locked at the right angle.

A very clear exercise of how it works is to try to do a circle of the diameter of your hand, with a pencil on a piece of paper.
Try to do it with your wrist, then try with your wrist/hand locked and move your full harm.

Again, try all possible moves from your wrist and see how much space it can cover. Not that much correct moves, and a lot of unprecise lines and curves.

Look:

Peace,

DKJ

KyleBl4ck · 18 Nov 2020

sheyd said:
So I’ve been apprenticing for about a week at a street shop, and I notice all the artists here tattoo with their wrist and/or fingers. Their lines are clean and consistent. I can make a clean line from my wrist easy, but I’ve been training myself to tattoo from shoulder because online a lot of professional tattooers say you should be tattooing from your shoulder, but they never say why.

What’s the pros of retraining your arm to move from your shoulder?

The first thing that came to mind is maybe future arthritis prevention? Idk

Smoother lines.
longer lines.

Cyberthrasher · 18 Nov 2020

MalligaMallan said:
For anyone searching - it's iampeth.com not Lampeth.com ? (took me a couple of minutes to sort that out)

Autocorrect going and capitalizing things on me!

TexasPT · 18 Nov 2020

I do both...depends on the lines. I'm not going to shoulder pull a 1/2" line...but I'm not going to try and get a 4" line from just the wrist.

there are NO absolutes, gospel truths, magic numbers, secret hand shakes...you have to try and figure out what works for you.

KyleBl4ck · 19 Nov 2020

Another point I should have added, the dudes who use their shoulder to tattoo, especially the more famous ones, only do it for one reason and thats so they can go back the opposite direction of the line via push / pull if the line is off or not fully saturated.

The more experience you get in actual skin you start to feel the strain of the needle vs skin and learn to tell if you did the line right or not before you even wipe.

It also helps with sculpting with a 5cm.

18Seki · 15 May 2021

Coming from a drawing background, I understand the importance of drawing from your shoulders. However, my question has to do with stretching the skin. If you are moving your wrist while drawing from the shoulder, wouldn't this make it really hard to do a 3 way stretch?

Tattooing with your wrist vs. your shoulder

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