Reinventing The Tattoo Forum

I believe that depends almost completely on an artists preferred application. Fusion and Eternal inks are in the middle between thick and thin. The more opaque colors tend to be thicker, I add a few drops of Silverback clear to most of my color caps to keep them from drying out while I work. Outside of that, I typically just use the ink as it comes from the manufacturer. I get great heals that last (so long as the client isn't living in the sun etc.) In conclusion, I don't believe the thickness matters nearly as much as the artists preference and ability to work with the inks/pigment of their choice.

Nice, good to know! I wanna try some brands, thats why i asked the question... atm using eternal, but its very expensive here in brazil, almost double the price of electric ink (much thinner), that is also nice.

Thanks for the answer man!

Before Eternal Ink becoming popular, I had only ever heard the term "ink" applied to black ink, and any color was referred to as pigment.

My asumption is that they were trying to say something like, "Our pigments are so thin, that it's like using ink."   

When you refer to thinner "inks", these are pre-dispersed pigments, that go through a process of breaking the ink particle into even smaller particles.  Which give you the thin, watery, easy to use effect.  

In breaking down the particle into smaller pieces, this makes it much easier to push into the skin, but the side effect is that it is slightly less dense.  So, imagine a giant blue rock, then break that rock into 3 rocks, where you can now see some ground in between the rocks.  That's the real difference.  Old school, thicker, pigments have larger particles.  And thus make a slightly more solid field of color....  however the trade off is they they are messy, harder to work with, and in my experience really require textured needles to really get the pigment into the skin.

I have had good results with both.  But when I'm working with Eternal or Fusion, I let the client know in advance that I will want at least another session to make sure that the color is as solid as possible.

It should also be noted, that if you are lining with color, there will be a difference.  We all know that color lines, aside from red (the smallest pigment particle), will get wider and fuzzier as we travel further in time.  Thicker pigments will get even fuzzier and wider because of the larger particles.