To cover- up a tattoo. What does it mean?
“Cover-up” is a term that refers to the technique of freshly tattooing a design right over an already existing tattoo. This is done in such a way that the new tattoo will totally cover over or completely hide the original tattoo. This is usually done because the first design is no longer wanted and a new and better one can be placed over it. Oftentimes, crude tattoos done by mistaught tattooists eventually become uncomely eyesores to the owners and they wish to change the situation. A good tattooist that understands cover-up can change their whole outlook. Because covering up tattoos is an art in itself, it should be seriously studied because a goodly portion of income can be made by doing this. Believe it, a good living can be made by covering up other tattooists’ bad mistakes, and unfortunately, there is a lot of it around to do.
The real key to doing good cover-up work is taking the time to correctly choose the right design. A perfect covering design must be right in many aspects and meet several requirements. It has to be a large enough design to more than hide the old tattoo. It must have substantial dark areas, like lots of shading, to make the old tattoo disappear under it.
And, on top of all this, the design should be pleasing and acceptable to the customer, have some sort of point of interest (like a head or claw) to draw the eye away from the actual cover-up area. Eventually, the tattooist will use a lot of imagination to invent new designs to cleverly cover-up old ones, making each one a custom tattoo. But it is still worthwhile, especially in the learning stages, to review some traditional standards popularly used in one form or another to achieve excellent cover-up success.
To start with, the heavily black shaded wings spread, are common cover-up themes. Just about any old design may be hidden in the shading of wings, yet the head or claws (or whatever else that might be added on) will detract the eye from the old design (now covered up) and will create a brand new tattoo. When finished, the customer will be proud of it instead of ashamed.
Posted on September 2nd, 2008 by admin
Tags: hawaiian tattoos, tatto ideas, tattoo pictures