Coverup Tattoos
HOW TO DESIGN A KILLER COVER UP TATTOO
Let’s face it – not everyone is happy with their tattoos. There are so many reasons someone could have a tattoo they want covered – it’s poorly done, it was a spur of the moment decision, or the design simply doesn’t resonate with them anymore.
Luckily, tattoo cover ups are a huge market in the industry, and there are thousands of tattoo artists out there with experience doing cover up tattoos. But how do you design a cover up tattoo that’s not only going to kick ass, but also cover up the tattoo you don’t want to see anymore?
SIZE MATTERS
You’re going to need to consider the size of your cover up tattoo. In order to fully cover the original work, the size of your new design needs to not only overlap it, but fully take it over. This is often the case with a cover up tattoo that blends with the original – the size of the artwork is going to expand.
German Shible, a tattoo artist out of Toronto, explains that you should “be prepared to go larger than the original. Going larger will help blend the existing tattoo and allow the artist to be more creative with layout, colours, and subject matter”.
COLOR
The darkest part of your cover up tattoo will need to be used to cover up the bulk of your old tattoo, so keep that in mind. When the new ink for a cover up is added, it doesn’t go over top of the ink from your old tattoo, it mixes with it to create a new color. Darker shades will overpower other colors here, so if you’re adding blue to red, for instance, or vice versa, it’s going to follow the laws of primary colors and make a purple shade. German emphasizes that “colours will be limited in range, since lighter colours will show the existing tattoo through them”. If you’re going for the same colors in your new tattoo, then you’ll just need darker shades of the same colors for successful coverage.
If you’re covering up a black ink tattoo with another black ink design, the color won’t change, but your chosen design will need to be darkest and biggest in the area that’s over top of your original tattoo. Getting a cover up tattoo doesn’t mean you have to go for a black ink design, though. Artists can use all sorts of colors, shading, and blending to create a whole new tattoo that completely covers your old one.