Cover-up Work

By: Deon Melchior



The thing about tattooing at makes people nervous about getting their first tattoo is its permanence. When they seek support or advice from friends and family, the first thing they hear is “Are you sure you want to do that? You can’t just take it off if you don’t like it.” But despite all the warnings and despite all they know about tattoos, they will still get their girlfriend’s name prominently inked into some painfully obvious place on their body. It happens all the time.

Getting someone’s name tattooed on your body is just an example, but it’s one of the most common regrets people have about their tattoos. Fortunately, there are some options. The tattoo can be removed via one of a number of drastic, expensive and painful procedures after which, instead of having an unwanted tattoo people ask you about all the time, you will have a scar people ask you about all the time. In fact, with some methods the scar looks eerily similar to the tattoo. Maybe you have a tattoo you are still in love with, it’s just old, and faded into a mere shadow if its former glory.

Often it’s not having a tattoo people change their minds about, it’s the design or a particular aspect of it. Your best bet is to sheepishly trot yourself back into the tattoo parlor and talk to someone about doing a cover-up job. Chances are great that you’ll come away from the experience with a design that your happier with and probably wouldn’t have come up with under normal circumstances.

The best candidate for this kind of work is a well healed, but fairly new tattoo that’s small and lightly colored. Of course, that’s just the ideal, and if you had an ideal tat, you wouldn’t be seeking a cover-up job in the first place. Don’t worry if you don’t fall into that category. There are some extremely talented artists out there. The Internet is full of before and after transformations on former darkly colored armbands that are truly amazing.

In every trade, some are decent at what that do, some are great and some are just terrible. Tattooing is no exception. You need to do some pretty intense shopping around before climbing into anyone’s chair. It’s also important to remember not every great tattooist is good at cover-up work. Ask a lot of questions and look at a lot of before and after shots before you make up your mind.

The laziest way of covering up a name for example, is blacking in out with a black box. No kidding, people actually do that. You’re other (and far more tasteful)l choices are incorporating the current design into a different one or covering it up completely with a bigger new one.

If your tat is faded and it’s a touch up you seek, modern technology is most definitely on your side. Ink is ever evolving, and now they are bolder, brighter and better than ever. Chances are you can leave the shop with a tattoo that is sharper, clearer, better looking than it was to begin with.

Complete cover up work can produce some pretty amazing results, but you have to be prepared to have a larger tattoo than you had to begin with. Once you’re confident you’ve found a really awesome artist, the project is likely to turn out best if you allow him as much artistic freedom as you can stand. Cover-ups can be quite difficult, and he knows better than you how to deal with the situation, After all, he is cleaning up your mess.




Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit - www.articleclick.com