Covered up a 15 year old tribal band with a koi fish... way harder than I thought

I had this ugly tribal arm band I got when I was 19, figured I'd just slap a koi over it. Took me three sessions over 6 months cause the old ink was so thick and dark, the artist kept having to pack in color. He ended up using a mix of deep blues and oranges to hide the lines, and we did a dark water background to blend it all together. Anyone else run into old ink that just refuses to budge under a cover up?

3 comments

3 Comments

gavin2281mo ago

Yeah I feel you on this one. I had a similar thing with a big black tribal piece on my shoulder that I tried to cover with a dragon. Took way longer than I expected and the artist told me straight up that some colors are just not gonna stick as well over the old ink. Ended up having to do a lot of dark shading and adding some red highlights just to break up the black lines. It's a pain but sounds like your artist knew what they were doing with the deep blues and oranges, that's a smart way to hide the old stuff.

mianelson1mo ago

You ever get that moment where you realize you were totally wrong about something? I used to think cover-ups were just a lazy shortcut, but seeing how much thought goes into picking the right colors and shading to hide the old ink kind of changed my mind.

brianm661mo ago

Did you think about lasering some of it first or just went straight to the cover up?