Hi there, it's Ram with Better Tetsuying and listener viewer question today. We actually want to figure out why washes work. Why we do the things that we do. So let's talk a little bit about light interaction. Aaaaah! Aaaaah! I'm spinning my hat around there. I don't know why, but I did. What do washes? I think we made a video about this. We did, I'll put a link in there if not. Well, oops. I mean, they had somebody write it and I think, hey, it's something that everyone does. Yeah, it is. And there's a specific reason why washes work the way that they work, right? And there's a few ways that you can approach them to try and improve your tattooing or how smooth things are or whatever else, right? So let's get into what washes are. When you take a raw pigment, mix, right? That's to be your bottled pigment that you've got, whatever brand, don't care. And then what you do is you add water, right? And what happens to it, you take both of these things and you funnel them down into an ink cap, right? And we compare this to just the bottles that are here. We can say this one is just going to be 100% that pigment, right? And when we start mixing in our waters of different ratios, let's say that this is a mix of 50% pigments and 50% water, is the total concentration of that pigment is going to be decreased, right? We have half of it is pigments and half of it is, and it's going to be blue. Half of it is water, which is fine. I mean, you look at it, it still looks like the same pigment. But why is this important? When we take this, we actually start looking at how that mixture works. We have two different representations of how this pigment is. On one side, we're going to have an aggregation of a whole bunch of these particles. And there's going to be tons when there's so many there. Oh my goodness, right? There's just a lot crammed into an area. I'm going to just go a lot. Yay. So that when energy is, like light energy is coming from whatever source, and it goes to interact with this, there's going to be more of those actual particles of pigment for light to interact with. And when it comes back out, it's going to make that color appear stronger or more vibrant than it is. And we get to the actual washes, and we take the same space. There's far fewer particles that have been dispersed into an area versus the other. So there's going to be less of a chance of all energy being able to interact with, interact with the pigment that has been deposited in the skin. So we're going to have a lower, qualitative quantity of light coming out that shows that tone that's going to be. So there's just going to be like less there. Which I mean, it doesn't have to be a sideways face anyways, but. These are really important when you're trying to create gradients inside of a design. More commonly, we'll know people who use these washes are like black and gray artists, right? And if we think about the color black, or even like some grays, it's really difficult to think about a gray color in our natural environment. Like you walk around and try to find gray, it's easy when you start thinking about, you know, human creation showing these tones. But if you try to find it in a forest, it's very difficult, right? And it only occurs at certain times of the day. What times are those? We'll have Dawn and Dusk, right? If we think about the planet, and wherever the sun is, if we have only some light coming in that may be filtered through our atmosphere, right? And it's decreased in its quantities. If we have something that looks white in the early morning or late in the day before the sun goes down, and this is white, the total quantity of light that's actually made available by that sun passing over the horizon is going to be decreased, especially when it interacts with our atmosphere. So those whites will actually appear gray. That's really cool. You go find a trillion flower out in the forest. If you have the access to those things depending on where you live, when the sun comes up or it goes down, and that light has been filtered a lot, they appear very gray. And then at night time, when there's no light on them, they look black, right? Because there's no energy there to light them up. And this is what happens when we're doing our tattoos. We're trying to think about, especially with black and gray tattoos, we're going to have our light snarderks. And they're going to have a maxima of whites and black. So our linear graph on this is going to be how much energy absorption that we have from pure energy to pure absorption. And when we have our mixes, let's say you set out three caps, right? We've got our black, which is going to be our full absorption. There's not going to be, we're trying to absorb as much energy as we can so that it's not coming back out. So it looks like it is dark to our variances in there, where we've got something that is 50% and one that's 25%. What we're doing is we're setting the amount of light absorption in that scale very specifically, right? We have something that is very dark, something that is halfway between being very light and very dark, depending on where the skin tone is at. Under 25% is going to be even lighter than that. This is just varying amounts of energy absorption that's going into it, right? So it's going to make it look like the sun is coming up over the horizon at different times. You have catch black night with no lights around or somewhere at 25%, where you can still see maybe, you know? A bit more of the sun and it's just getting gray out. And it's going to make it seem like there's a different vibe or value or tone and things that are going on. And doing this because light is going to be coming out of different values, you can make things look like they are rounded, shaped. There's texture, there's all these things. You create the illusion of something being there that isn't there because you're literally manipulating light. And this comes down to how many particles of pigment are in there. Like if this is totally filled, solid black, and this one has half as many lines, and this one has even less, the amount of that stitching that's going on that's going to be absorbing stuff is going to be decreased. If we get past blacks, we're going into colors. It's the same thing, right? How strong of a presence are you wanting that color? And I've made a video about this and you can, you can't use colored washes. The idea is behind these things is how much of that color do you want made available? And over time, as colors get broken down by interaction with light, just why normally don't use colored washes. We're trying to make sure there's enough of a quantity there that, you know, it can interact with it. But if it's breaking down, eventually that color is going to fade away. Because what you're doing with that is you're working inverse to black and gray work. You're trying to create the illusion that something is very strong that's in there, right? And you need it for contrast. It's not being about absorption and creating that through literally trying to create light. And you're trying to create a color that is not supposed to normally exist in human skin, so you have to do it differently. It doesn't mean you can't do washes. We use them for blends. It's really good. If you have a wash and you're going over another color that's already deposited into the skin, and you're trying to tint it, works great, right? Because any control have strong of an expression that you want between those interactions of pigments. But some really technical, heavy-skilled stuff that you need a lot of experience with varying skin tones to get into. I mean, we can make some videos about it. I'll put it on the list. Anyways, but to start learning about this stuff, and before you get into color, especially like with the stuff that we teach, we're always having people become very, very, very proficient at understanding how light interacts with washes when you're doing blacks and grays. This is some fundamental stuff, so. And we hope that makes sense for you all. Like, subscribe to all that stuff, and that's it for today. This is Ryan from Better Tattoo, and sign them off.