The ability for a tattoo coverup has been around for a long time; laser brings us into a new world where we have more freedom over what we are working with as a coverup. When you typically cover up a tattoo for a couple of years. Down the road, you can see the old tattoo start to resurface under the new tattoo; this can even happen when the new tattoo is a total blackout. With a laser, we can break down the ink so that the new tattoos ink saturation will cover the old like a fresh coat of pain and won’t have to deal with seeing anything surface down the road.
The 2nd is the freedom that the artist can have in these situations. Tattoo artists must always figure out what is possible to tattoo for a coverup. What subject matter will work, and that’s not always going to be what you want as a client, thus making you now have a 2nd tattoo that isn’t great. With a laser, we can take that out of the equation.
Throughout five treatments, Tattooer Milo Alfring of Black Sage Studio and I started a journey to help him with a new tattoo coverup. He had been working on a full torso tattoo and made his way from the bottom up, knowing we would get his chest lightened up so he could finish the top. This post shows that process from start to finish and will help you understand the journey!
The Original Tattoo
What you are looking at here are the two birds that we will be treating with laser tattoo removal for them to be covered up eventually. All the work under them is new tattoo work and will be brought up to the top of his chest/collarbone area when we are done. The line work is heavy, and the fill is “black and grey.” This usually leads to a few treatments to break down the line of work. The black and grey filler should come out with only 1 or 2 treatments.
After One Treatment
As you can see in the photo above, virtually all his black and grey filler is gone. I talk with my clients about this quite a bit. Black and grey tattoos typically come out very fast because the black ink is mixed with water to dilute the pigment and give it that grey tone. Less ink = faster results.
Another thing to notice is how broken his line work looks. In the previous image, all the line work is clean and smooth, and now after only one treatment, you can see it’s turning rough and broken-looking. The client can sometimes have difficulty seeing results throughout the laser tattoo removal because they see the tattoo daily. I help ensure my clients know the process works by pointing out these changes.
After three treatments, we can see his grey wash filler is wholly gone, and the line work is breaking up more and more. The line work is also starting to look “fuzzy,” which means the body is breaking it down nicely. Another thing to notice through this process is that there aren’t any signs of blistering or scaring. I use a method called “low and slow.” The idea behind this method is to maintain the skin’s integrity without damage, leading to no side effects for the client to deal with when appropriately treated.
As time passes, the body continues to break down the ink, with each treatment working behind the scenes to help with the tattoo coverup journey. Working with the Low and Slow method, we can work on tattoos as early as once a month. This allows us to maintain steady progress and see great results throughout our sessions.
Treatment Video
People love to ask me what treatments are like and how long they take, so here is a video from our journey over the last few months. The average session only lasts around 30 seconds to 1 min.
Ready for a tattoo coverup
We did five treatments on Milos’s chest for his journey to a new tattoo coverup, and we had terrific results! As you can see in the image below, we got around a 90% reduction overall, and this is WELL beyond what you need for a proper coverup. Alongside his tattoo removal results, we kept his skin clean and free of blisters or scarring, thus allowing for his tattoo to be able to treat his skin as if there was never a tattoo there in the first place.
In Conclusion
As you can see, Milo’s chest is now so light that he won’t even have to worry about the new tattoo he will do on his chest. He now has the freedom to move forward with any designs possible for his continued work, thus completing his torso exactly how he and his artist intended without sacrificing style or design.
Book your FREE Consultation today, and let us help you with your future tattoo removal needs!