Spit Shading Tattoo Flash — San Diego Tattoo Artist

This is a quieter one. I'm painting the design directly from the cover of “Death on a Dude Ranch” as traditional tattoo flash and talking through spit shading while I work.

Spit shading is a traditional painting method where black ink gets diluted and pulled out by hand. Using spit and your mouth to control the wetness of the brush to build soft gradients. A lot of classic flash was designed around it. You can see it in the soft fades and simple tonal transitions that show up all over American traditional work.

I don't lean on it much in my own practice anymore. I've moved toward methods that give me more consistency and control, but it's worth understanding.

The skull goes by the name "Crazy Sal Skull" in a lot of circles, but that name came later and isn't really what this video is about. If you want the full history and the story behind the name, I wrote about that separately — [Crazy Sal post].

📍 I'm based in San Diego, working out of Remington Tattoo in North Park. If you're into traditional American or Japanese tattooing, or just enjoy the history side of things, feel free to reach out.