How to Cover Up a Tattoo

Video Transcript

"There's a gentlemen with a design, it's a rose with a, with a banner and a name inside the banner. It's a very nicely done tattoo, but he is no longer with this person. And would like to get this banner changed into something other than banner and wipe out the name. What we're going to attempt to do, is turn this banner into a snakes' body, if possible, with it. Continuing aggression at it's going, curving back around, using the inside of here. Possibly, we can do some scale work down here to scramble up the lettering. Come back then on top of the scale work, put some shading and color, thus getting rid of the name. Well, when doing a cover up, that's what's the most important part, you got to, especially when you're covering letters. You don't want to see any portion of the lettering showing through the cover up. That's the effect we're looking for. A lot of times when you're doing a cover up, especially lettering, if it's done by a crude machine. You might have it raised a bit. And if that's the case, no matter if you're putting color over it or whatever. You're always going to be able to see that raised portion of the tattoo through the new tattoo. So you've got to keep that in mind. This particular one was done very well, it's very flushed with the skin. So I don't think, there'll be any problem with the name actually showing through the tattoo, once it's complete. So what we're going to attempt to do with this is , is turn this portion of the banner into the body of the snake. Trying to keep it as natural looking as possible. It's going to be kind of tough with this particular design. While we're going to give it a, the college try. And once you get the basic outline, it's going to continue around, behind the rose here. And probably come out this side with the head of the snake being up here, somewhere. This portion's going to be the body and once I've got that drawn in. We'll come back inside here, like I said before. We've got to scramble these letters up so that they're not legible. So we just come in and lay us a little Cross Hatching, as we use in, the term we use in this business. Where you make some kind of diagonal lines in one direction and come and go across them from this direction. Using a curved stroke, so it looks more like a scaled look. But once the, once it's done, you can see that you can no longer, the name was Denise. You can no longer read the name and that's just with the pen marks. Once the tattoo's actually done with that black, black ink, then the shading going across it. You wont' even be able to read it or see it at all. O.k., remember when you're doing your cover up, you stay to the outside of the adjusting lines. You want to try to make that adjusting line part of the tattoo, but you want to try to stay to the outside as much as you can. And then when you get to the part of the lettering, try to scramble it up as much as you can. In this case with scales in the snake's body. Alright, get these lines for the body as scales marks, then it doesn't have to be a perfect line at this point. Just so you don't lose your drawing or your sensing here. Now we're going to go to the Cross Hatching belly scales, I'm going to go right through the, right through the letters with the Cross Hatching marks. It has to be curved lines, it can't just be diagonal lines, because this is a curving design, where you put a little curves in there. Get down to the cover up portion of this design here. And again, I'm just going to go right under this light shading that I'm putting in over here, with the green, right over, top of it. And as you see, I'm leaving a small space up there. To clean the top of the dark green in the line in the snake's body. That's going to be a cool highlight of whatever color I choose. Sometimes you can use a lighter green, you can use yellow, you can use blue, you can, it depends on, I guess, how you're feeling that day. I chose green for this design for a couple of reasons. I like the way the snake's looking when done in this line of fashion and green is a dark color. And it's really good for covering up letters and things of that nature. Since these letters had green in them already, that's even more of a plus to me. Because I'm just matching the pigment that's already in the skin. So that make sit even better. If you'll just put that black shading in first and then go over the top of it. It's really going to give a nice look. This is the end of the snake cover up tattoo we've done here, this afternoon. Things have turned up pretty darn good."