Cover Up of a Cover Up Tattoo Repair

Casey contacted me with an upper back piece that already had several unsuccessful cover up tattoo attempts, book ended by a couple of effective tattoos on either side.

She said, "I know it's currently kind of a mess, but I'm hoping we can do something with it; I don't even care what imagery you use, as long as it's fixed. I'm so tired of it not being finished." I replied, "Sure, let's have you come in and I'll see what we can do." The two tattoos on the outsides were fine; it was just the stuff in the center of her back that really needed help. The cover up part had good bones with the choice of imagery used (botanical with a moth) but there was lots of scarring (see the white areas in the Before pix below) in the lower roses, so I recommended that Casey get those lasered first to see if they could be flattened out. So she did that for awhile, with great results. Then we had to pump a bunch of white into the old dark areas (mostly the stars) before we could start, so there was quite a bit of prep work to be done before I could lay in the new imagery and really get to fixing it. (Cover up tattoos take lots of patience, but they are worth the time and money, if clients can just stick with the process.) We are finally at the color stage now and will get Casey's wish completed in this new year.

Here are some photos of the drawings, before, fresh outline and very fresh gray shading stages.