Chris and his wife Kelly contacted me about working on a couple of tattoos for them; Chris went first-- a coverup for his upper right arm. (We will be working on Kelly's tat a bit later.)
At his consultation he brought in an illustration that he thought might work nicely for a cover up-- a stand of trees growing/evolving/transforming out of a heart with mountains in the center.
He loves the forests and mountains of the PNW and wondered if we could customize the image to reflect the ones he likes the best. I thought trees would work perfectly to camouflage the old tattoo and that we could take advantage of their placement to provide some good negative space within the design.
I redrew the image to work better as a cover up and we got started, pumping some white into the old tattoo first.
Here are some pictures of the drawing, before, outline, gray shading and fresh final color stages.