Reese has come all the way up from Tauranga for this project. I love getting clients from all over New Zealand He had a bunch of old tattoos he got when he was 18, about 15 years ago, and he wanted to find someone to get rid of them and start sorting out his past tattoo mistakes. Most of the stuff he got done was from some budget local tattoo shops and he had tried a couple of times to get them reworked which didn’t work too well, and he has also just moved on from the type of imagery that these old tats depict.
Our aim is to start covering the old work with fresh new work that actually compliments the body and works on a scale that fits the body. This can be a tough process with a lot of problem solving and drawing on the skin to get everything in the right place. Planning is essential to getting a good cover up, and its worth the wait for someone who know what they are doing.
What makes a good cover up? The cover up should effectively get rid of the old tattoo so it can be barely seen to the untrained eye, or be dynamic and distracting enough that it doesn’t really matter if the old tattoo shows through a bit. It should be in a style that lasts forever, and most importantly it should be something that the wearer is happy to wear. Often the best cover ups are traditional tattoos with a lot of black, but also plenty of colour to distract from the old tattoo and to balance out the amount of black needed for covering the old tatto. Sometimes getting a cover up means the wearer might be limited in choices (for example its often best to go with western traditional or Japanese styles, and often the subject matter is limited to what will work as a cover up), but its still super important that they would be happy with the necessary image regardless of the fact that it is a cover up.
The worst thing we see in the tattoo industry is when people make a mistake the first time, usually due to rushing, trying to get cheap work, or just making poor decisions as a young person, and then hate their tattoo, but then also end up unhappy with their attempt at a solutio. When the first bad tattoo happens, people often then rush to backtrack and fix their tattoo. Often, if people aren’t properly educated on how to get an effective cover up or fix up, and try to fix their old tattoo in a way that doesn’t work, or use an artist who isn’t really able to or experienced enough to fix or cover the work, and the problem becomes even worse. So the new cover up needs to both work, and be an image and style that the wearer would actually be happy with.
Reese had been following my work for a while and liked my style, so that was the first box ticked, but usually I can give people my best work when I have a lot of freedom and free skin, so we needed to agree on a subject matter to achieve a good result on some really large, difficult to cover old tattoos.
Often the best go to’s for coverups are Japanese flowers, Koi, Snakes, Dragons, Fu dogs, and so on. Creatures that can have a lot of black in them, organic shapes, and plenty of room for colour in the right areas. I really like to insert good amounts of colour in to any areas of the project that still have some free skin, to draw the eye away from the messier areas where the old tattoos are. Things that aren’t as good for coverups are human figures and faces, masks and so on as they rely on a lot of clear space where the skin should be,
We agreed on a Snake as the main theme for this cover up, as due to the extensive amount of difficult to cover old work on his arm, it would be the best type of image to manipulate to cover the old stuff. We chose Sakura for the flower to compliment the snake, because they are small so easy to fit in tight spaces of clear skin. For background I chose cloud and rock rather than water because they are more simple. I adjusted my background style to be a bit bigger and bolder, so I could inject a lot of large areas of black in the the tattoo, I explained that the first session would be the toughest session, as there would be a lot of standing around and waiting for me to draw everything on. Below is a video of our first session, can’t wait to do more!