Hey there! How goes it, you sweet digital degenerates? It's me, the goblin man who has an addiction to cardboard. But, not only do I have an addiction to cardboard, I'm quite addicted to getting tattooed. This time around though, I didn't technically get "new" ink on my body. You see, I had a few tattoo's on my body that I've never been fully happy with. One, more so than the other. Which happened to be my first tattoo. But, I'll get into the reason of that more in a bit. Either way, I haven't been happy about these tattoos so I decided to hit up my artist and see if we could do something about it. Typically, people do coverups when they're unhappy with their work. (If you don't know what a tattoo cover up is, then read a fucking book, man. Okay, but seriously it's just when you take a totally new idea/image and tattoo it over an old one. This can be a difficult process depending on what you're having covered up and what the artist has to work around.) But, I'm hesitant to really call these cover ups because what I ended up doing is more reworking the tattoos into fresh ideas that just look nicer. Basically, building up off the old bones and just polishing them up pretty much.
I went into my recent appointment unsure of what we were going to do, because even with reworking them there's different factors you have to consider. One of the main ones being how well the fresh ink will sit over top the old pigment already present in my skin. With the main tattoo I wanted tweaked, that was a big concern, but not so much with the other. But, instead of yapping on more let me show you what the bigger tattoo I wanted changed was.
Here's a fresh picture of what my first tattoo was right after it was done. I'm sure most of you don't know what this is because I'd venture to say 60 percent of this site doesn't play video games. This is the Red Marker symbol from the horror series Dead Space. Who'd have guessed someone obsessed with Dead space would get a Dead Space tattoo. Surprise Pikachu face, am I right? Anywho. I had this done the day after my 19th birthday, and was kind of rushed into it from a family member who booked me an appointment with their tattoo artist since they knew I was wanting to get my first one done. So, for starters, I didn't get to pick out my artist and research them which is a big no-no when it comes to tattoos. But, I was an excited kiddo so I was just happy to finally get my first tattoo done. And, at first I was super happy with it. But, of course shit went a bit sideways.
I had some weird aftercare instructions from the tattoo artist that I followed, and a bunch of color bled out of the tattoo after a few weeks. It was very splotchy and cloudy and I obviously wasn't very happy with it. I reached out to the guy 3 or 4 times over the following 2 months, asking when we could possibly set up a touch up appointment to get the color situation sorted out. And, instead of that happening, the guy just ghosted me and then eventually blocked me. He then move to LA about 6 months later out of the blue to everyones confusion. To this day, I have no idea why the fuck this guy was such a difficult weirdo to deal with. And, to quote the intellectual prowess of the band Lincoln Park, in the end it doesn't even matter. Because, 10 years later that guy would end up ODing in my ex brother in laws house. Weird fucking world we live in, eh?
After fighting with the shop who were quite difficult about getting me a touch up appointment with someone after he left, they finally got me in and were generous enough to put me with an apprentice who had been there about 8 months who tried his best, but ended up kind of fucking up the tattoo from what I originally wanted. Here's a picture of what the tattoo has looked like for the past decade after he touched it up.
The color issue was fixed where it didn't look cloudy/patchy all over. But, he ended up thickening all the black borders way too much and taking away from the sleek look that it had previously in the design. And, overall it just felt like it had been downgraded from what it originally was, and that my idea had been goofed up. I never fully "hated" this tattoo, but I was never really proud of it or loved it. The bitterness of the whole situation in general didn't help either, as I just always thought about how shit my first experience ended up being. I think it being such ass was actually one of the main reasons why I waited another 10 years before I got back into tattoos.
Thankfully, my current tattoo artist Scotty was willing to mess with this so when I came into his shop a few days ago we sat down and brainstormed a bit. I felt kind of lost with what we could do with this to make it better, without just making it look like shit was added onto it as an afterthought. My first idea was to add Unitology text (A religious cult obsessed with the marker) from the game around the top and maybe add a shading/glowy effect behind it and on the sides. We ended up getting rid of the text idea, but he did come up with a quick concept for a glow look which ended up having a very sci-fi look that I loved (Dead Space being a very sci fi game also made it very on brand). The concern with this idea was how much of the color would stick over though and how it would look after it healed up, since he was going to try and alter the line work and didn't know how the existing pigment would work with the new one since there's no way to tell what kind was used for my original tattoo. And, at that point we were basically just going to try and clone the tattoo into a new aesthetic. He came up with a second idea which was also very in line with the game I also loved equally, and it seemed like there was a stronger chance of it healing up better so we went with that in the end. (After I asked like 9 people to help me decide because I was torn between the two. Honestly, maybe I'll do a video game sleeve on my leg and incorporate that idea into it or something and be cringe.)
However, we went the opposite route from sci-fi and sleek. Behold, my new tattoo that will certainly cause some people to be concerned for the health of my skin.
We ended up going with a more gore oriented route with the design, as Dead Space is one of the most gory games of all time. The fleshy look along with the blood trickling works super well with the context of the games, and honestly I'm super stoked we ended up going this route. At the start of the tattoo I wasn't really sure how it would turn out, but I think my boi killed it. It was a bit of a pain in the ass though, as the original artist placed it in a very weird spot on my arm for some reason that neither of us really understood. I've always thought it needed to be an inch higher and an inch to the right on my arm. But, nothing we could do about that. During our brainstorming, we also decided to make the area around the tattoo look irritated as well to give it a bruised/infected type of look. Which, again, very on brand for a space zombie/infected creature type of game. All that red around the tattoo is part of the tattoo, and I'll be curious to see if people in the future come up and ask me if my tattoo is okay. Only time will tell. But, yeah. Love the new, fresh look of my tattoo and I can definitely feel happy/proud of this one instead of just feeling like I have a mediocre tattoo.
Now, lets talk about the other tattoo I changed up a bit. This next tattoo was my reintroduction into tattoos after taking a huge break. My partner decided she wanted to get her first tattoo, so for our anniversary two years ago that's what we ended up doing. Going into a shop and getting tattooed together. The issue with wanting to do tattoos in 2021 though, was most shops were heavily booked out from Covid still. So, we were limited in what we could choose from. We ended up finding a shop that had some openings though, and we both thought the artists were decent enough to do what we wanted. As they were both simple tattoos ideas. The process was super easy/simple, and I didn't have any annoying issues like I did the previous time with the artist. (I did have an issue with the owner just giving off douchey dude frat bro vibes, which was off putting and made him seem like a bit of a cunt.) However, while my design was simple I wasn't overly happy with the outcome as the line work was a bit sloppy. Not enough to really piss me off, but enough to where I was just kind of meh about the tattoo.
At first glance it looks fine but the longer and closer you look at it the more you'd notice it's not the greatest line work by any means. Definitely not the worst, but when I mentioned I wasn't happy with this either to my artist I was happy to hear he was also willing to give this a whirl. I'm sure no one knows what this is, so I'll just explain. This is a reference to the Japanese manga Berserk, it's called the Brand of Sacrifice which is basically a symbol marking that you're cursed and doomed. Berserk has been my favorite manga since I was a teen, and I've re-read what has been put out probably 8 times over by now. It has the best artwork by far in my opinion, and a great story with great characters. Sadly the author passed away before finishing his work due to health issues, and now his assistants are trying to finish the story. I've been waiting to catch up on that until they have a huge amount of chapters out. But, yeah. Just a reference to another series that is close to my heart.
Since it's technically supposed to be a magical brand on the skin, I figured maybe we'd stick with the gore like vibes and make it look like such. He was super down to do that as well, and actually changed up the linework a bit to make it blend in much more like an actual brand instead of just looking sloppy. I'm super grateful we could do anything to improve it since it's such a simple design with thick borders. Here's what we ended up with in the end.
Definitely has an irritated look to it similar to my marker tattoo, but I think it's different enough to stand out on its own. Not a huge change by any means, but enough for me to be happy with the tattoo and feel like it fits in well with my other pieces where I don't feel like a scufflord now. But, yeah. Just wanted to share my updated tattoos with you guys. I'm planning on getting at least 2 more tattoos this year, if not 3 possibly. Then, I'll probably be slowing it down and maybe just getting 1 a year for the next few years as I'd like to save up enough money to get a half sleeve done on my left arm. Which will probably cost at least 1.5-2k, which is a shit ton obviously. But, yeah. Hope you enjoyed checking out my tattoos, bruvs!
Until next time! Later!