Coverup or Blastover - What’s your Tattoo Rework Focus?
Coverup design by Patrick Egan
When you're ready to bring new life to your skin and want to retire an old tattoo, you'll have the option of doing a traditional tattoo coverup or a newly popular blast over tattoo rework.
Both are awesome, it's just what you're looking to achieve that's different!
Let’s start with the basics:
What is a Coverup Tattoo?
A coverup tattoo is a tattoo enhancement technique of putting new ink on top of an old tattoo to divert the eye from the old tattoo with a new focal point.
The focus is usually on the color of an old tattoo and how to incorporate it into the new ink.
In most cases, we recommend creating a design that’s around 30% larger than the first tattoo. This ultimately camouflages the old design.
If done correctly, we can conceal the area reworking every inch of the previous design.
Things to Consider with a Coverup Tattoo
Tattoo Size
The coverup design will always be bigger in size. There are possibilities that you will not get the size you originally hoped for.
Bigger designs allow drastic changes and effective camouflaging. If you’re not feeling comfortable with the sizing, consider having a few sessions of laser tattoo removal to fade your tattoo before getting a coverup; it usually takes just a few sessions and we’re partnered next door with Take It Off Tattoo Removal (and we highly recommend them!).
Ink Choices
The color palette used to cover old tattoo designs ranges from blues, browns, and black.
When it comes to executing your coverup, shades like oranges, and yellow don’t provide the right amount of coverage. We can use bright colors to fix designs drawn with bright colors.
We always suggest bold and dark color options to camouflage your old tattoo.
Dark on Dark is Best
If your old tattoo is super dark or highly saturated, our cover-up ink might be visible through it.
In most cases, we use a lot of dark ink to achieve the best coverup. Inks like blue or black will appear on the cover-up tattoo, while white or yellow will get lost.
The best way to plan a path forward is to work with our artists and let them know what you’d like to do. They can develop a few ways to get there so you can choose the best that fits your idea of how you want to cover the old tattoo. Contact us to get the conversation started.
Old Tattoos are Easier to Cover
The age of your tattoo matters!
Tattoos fade over time as our white blood cells absorb the pigment and transfer them through our lymphatic system and we excrete them.
Red and yellow fade quicker than black and dark blue, and tattoos that are mostly shading also fade quicker than heavy linework tattoos.
Covering up old tattoos is easier than a brand new one, and they are more easily executed for your artist.
Should you want to “accelerate” the aging process, try a few sessions of tattoo removal before working on the coverup tattoo.
Listen to your Artist
Don’t be discouraged if your artist tells you that your coverup idea won’t work; they just want to make sure that the tattoo you both decide on together will be as successful as possible.
All of our artists are adept at coverups and like the challenge, they also really love being able to provide the relief that many coverup projects bring our clients.
Blastover Tattoos!
Blastover design by Chris Martin
So, technically, a blastover tattoo is considered a coverup tattoo, since it’s going on top of your previous tattoo.
The difference is that the tattoo intentionally shows the old work as a layer to bring more interest to the piece. You’ll often see bold traditional pieces put on top of old watercolor tattoos or soft neo-trad designs from the 90s.
It’s like mixed media, but on your body!
This style of tattoo is quickly gaining in popularity as we start to run out of space on our bodies to get new tattoos. It’s also a great way to pay homage to our old self while being able to bring new life to our skin with tattoos that more closely represent our style today.
Because the goal isn’t to cover the old tattoo completely, you’ll have much more creative wiggle room with your artist to achieve the perfect look.
Keep in mind that bold linework will always make your blastover pop the most over your old tattoo. Whatever your vision is for your new piece, we’re happy to help guide the way, we like doing coverups, but, not gonna lie, we LOVE doing blastovers!