Cover-up tattoo
Your Answer
Please login to write an answer to this question.
Login to AnswerHi! In my youth, I foolishly got a dark, vague tattoo on my shoulder that now looks like just a dirty spot. I don't want laser removal - it's too long and painful. I'm thinking of getting a high-quality cover-up. Does the new design have to be completely black and huge to cover the old flaw? Or can a good artist incorporate the old outline into a color sketch? Could you share your experience with successful cover-ups?
I did a cover-up over an old army tattoo. A skilled artist seamlessly blended the old dark outlines into a new, color-rich sketch with plenty of shadows. You don't have to cover everything with solid blackwork; modern pigments cover old ink very well.
I had a cover-up done at this studio myself and can confirm that they employ top-notch artists. Examples of their work covering old tattoos are available on the page https://thefalltattooing.com/pages/tattoo-cover-up. The tattoo artist created a cool custom design for me and flawlessly blended the old dark outlines into the new colors. The pigment quality is excellent, everything healed beautifully, and now there's no trace left of that old mistake from my youth.
As far as I know, covering up a tattoo isn’t as easy as it seems. It’s not just getting something new tattooed over the old tattoo. You have to understand how the colors will fade, how one design will sit over another, and a whole bunch of other nuances.
I’d say that when choosing an artist for a tattoo cover-up, you should put even more thought into it than when choosing an artist and a shop for your first tattoo. Basically, I like shops like https://www.logansquaretattoo.com/chicago-tattoo-shop, where right on the website you can not only check out the services, but also look at the tattoo artists, their work, portfolios, read about what styles they work in, and also read about the whole tattoo cover-up process. Maybe I’m easy to win over, but that really sells me.