Hey, I'm Jake with the fireside
Tattoo Network, welcome to another episode of Fireside Technique.
You know, if you've been tattooing for any period of time,
you've probably been asked by a client or a potential client
whether you can cover a dark tattoo
with a light tattoo or whether light ink can cover dark ink.
A lot of times it comes in the form of, Hey, can you cover my ex's name
just by mixing up a skin tone that's like mine and putting it right over the name.
And of course, we know that you can't do that.
That idea, I think, comes from people believe that
when we punch holes in skin and we lay ink in the skin,
we're laying it on top of the previous layer of ink, like there's an old tattoo
and we're putting the new tattoo on top of it.
And that's not actually what's happening.
What's really happening is that these particles of ink
are kind of being pushed into the skin, and they all live in the dermis
there together.
And so optically, they kind of
co-mingle
or intermingle, and we blend them with our eyes, right?
So so we can't put light colors
over dark colors and get rid of them,
but we can affect them to a certain extent.
Sometimes we can push them back 10, 20%.
It may look on the front end like we're pushing them back 50 or 60%
whenever the tattoo is fresh, but when it heals, the old tattoo tends
to make its way back through.
And that's why it takes a true professional to kind of
to master cover ups.
It has a lot to do with planning.
It has a lot to do with kind of tricking the eye into saying,
Hey, look at me over here and ignore this over here.
So I did have an opportunity recently
or a while back now to kind of put this to the test though,
this idea of covering light I'm sorry, covering dark inks with light inks.
I Have a good friend that I've known for many years
that had an older tattoo of mine on his forearm,
and we spend a lot of time hanging out,
sitting at the bars, and he's sitting on the counter
a lot with his with his arm up on the counter. And I,
I was always bothered
by the tattoo just because it looked chaotic to me.
The problem was I had these really bold
reds, these really strong,
rich colors in the background that were jumping forward
and they were swallowing up my foreground image.
They just were making everything look chaotic.
I didn't know where to look when I looked at it, especially looking
through the looking at the healed tattoo through arm hair, I would just find myself
staring at it and saying, I need to do something about that.
And so my solution or my potential solution I thought
was going to be to try to knock back some of those really bold,
warm tones in the background.
So that's what I tried to do.
And luckily I filmed it and we made a technique episode out of it.
So check it out.
And I hope that you hope you get something from it.
I think it's a pretty good episode.
All right.
So here is the original tattoo and you can see down there on the forearm
what I was talking about, how those reds are just too warm.
If that's not the only issue.
There are there are design issues as well.
Meaning that there are a lot of patterns, a lot of images, a lot of shapes
that are competing.
But what I'm going to do here is try to establish a hierarchy.
And so that's what I see the most is the turtle on the forearm.
That's what I want to focus on.
So let's go ahead and get started.
So before I go in and try to knock those reds back,
I'm going to do a handful of other things that I think will help to establish
that hierarchy.
First thing I'm going to do is to push contrast by putting my darkest darks in the
in the turtle in the foreground.
And I'm going to start with the edges, I'm building up those lines
on the outside edges just to kind of lift that thing forward a little bit.
And a lot of times, you know,
just just bumping through those edges and hitting your blacks is enough.
But it's also a little bit deceptive.
You know,
what you're seeing right now as I line the head here
and it looks like it jumps forward, is that we're looking at
fresh black on top of multiple year old color.
So of course, it looks a lot bolder.
But once that settles in, you're going to lose some of that effect.
So while it's helpful to go through and push these edges and push this contrast,
you have to keep in mind that it is going to settle in a little bit.
And that alone is probably not going to be enough to solve the problem going in
and just kind of hitting some of my darks in the textures of the face here.
I want to get my
greatest contrast in the in the turtle.
Now I'm going through and I'm starting to
starting to shade out on the shadow side a little bit.
Another thing that I had noticed as I was working on it
was that the light source was a little bit unclear to me.
For instance, there's a strong shadow in the neck of the turtle,
but it doesn't really translate to say like his chin or even to that back
flipper, his back leg or whatever you call them on turtles.
It seems like his head should be casting a shadow on that back flipper.
And it's not there's some light that's kind of jumping forward
and just makes the shapes look a little bit off.
It looks it's a little bit confusing.
So I'm going to go through and kind of reinforce those shapes.
And I'm just kind of thinking like, all right,
this head this neck is just kind of a cylinder.
So if I were to shine a light coming from the left side of the cylinder,
how would that light or how would the cylinder respond to that?
And that's something that if you've been through our Foundations course
that we really focus on a lot
is breaking things down mentally into simple shapes.
And then learning how light reveals those shapes
so that you can take most any image, break it down into those simple shapes
and make them make sense.
I think it's vital
probably the single most important element in good drawing to me.
Now, I didn't want to just go straight from black into that aged kind of green
so I mixed up a little bit of a deeper green and try to make that transition
a little bit smoother.
You know, I don't want to go
through and rework the entire turtle, but I do want the transitions to look smooth.
I want it to look like
that they could have been done at the same time.
And sometimes if you if you're really paying attention, you can learn to use
some of those aged really settled in inks to your areas, to your advantage.
If you really put up some bold areas and then make a smooth transition
from those dark, bold
areas into the older stuff, it provides sometimes a pretty nice contrast.
Same thing here as I get into the bottom of the shell, really
trying to push the blacks make sure that I'm getting a lot of strong contrast.
My darkest darks and my lightest lights are in the turtle and , or
will be in the turtle and that'll kind of help it to draw more attention.
And then as I go through and I try to knock back the background
those things together,
I'm hoping will
will do the trick.
Just playing a little bit with the edges right there and trying to I'm
trying to make sure that my my transitions and my edges are nice and smooth.
You can see there
that we're already kind of starting to make some more sense out of the turtle.
He's pushing forward a little bit.
Like I said, it's a little bit deceptive because he's fresh
and everything else is really healed and settled in.
But but we're getting there is trying to reinforce a few of those textures,
you know, pulling more, textures also will draw some attention
and trying to emphasize the texture in the turtle
and then de-emphasize the textures in the background
is just another thing that I'm hoping will kind of push that turtle forward.
All right.
And as we cut to a wide shot here that the upper arm, what I started
my work is only from the band of sharks down
the upper arm was actually done by our former co-host David Evans.
And back in the early nineties, I would assume
that is classic David Evans right there.
He was one of the one of the pioneers of of custom tattooing in Memphis and
and all those little textures and clouds and things like that
I would recognize from a mile away, I've seen them for so long
Okay.
So this stingray or manta ray that's up
on the bicep there, it had settled in a lot, too.
And I kind of like the light blue transition where I pulled from David's
existing waves down into the warm tones at the bottom.
I like that light blue and I like how it's settled in over the years.
It kind of provides a little relief for the eye.
And so I think to reinforce that,
I wanted to go in and push that
the wing of the, of the stingray forward by making it a lot darker.
It also gives me a nice, interesting shape to lay right across the bicep there
to draw some attention.
And like I said, to reinforce
the light areas that sit behind it.
I'm just trying to think about shapes, you know, just trying to go through and say,
all right, where could I use where where can I use some darker darks?
Where can I punch this?
What can I what can I leave alone to drop back?
And, you know,
I'm always kind of getting back away from the piece, squinting my eye,
especially in something like this, where there's so many competing images anyways.
There are so many elements that are all about the same size
and a lot of textures and a lot of patterns.
I just want to simplify wherever I can and give give some relief for the eye.
You can see how that
wing is already kind of pushing forward a little bit there up on the bicep.
All right.
Now don't be mad at me,
but my camera cut out while I actually went over those reds,
which was the focus of the entire piece, but the entire video.
But you can see that I did.
I went over it with kind of a golden yellow.
I think I
the use like Eternal's golden yellow or maybe caramel or something like that.
And I tried to just go over the entire thing and simplify it.
And now what I'm doing is and coming back with my lightest lights
and and putting them in on the light side of the turtle
just to push that contrast and create a little more texture
and just one last ditch effort to kind of pull that head forward a little bit
because I know that as this thing settles in, some of those reds are going
to come back out in the background And I want to use all of the elements,
all the tools in my toolbox to try to get some separation here.
If you remember, whenever the, when the
video first started,
there were some really stark bands of red to yellow in that background.
And I think they were too stark.
They really brought everything, brought that background forward.
So whenever I went through with those kind of orange golden yellows,
I tried to go over the entire thing.
And there you can see it.
This is fresh right after I finished it.
And you can see that,
you know, it looks like it knocked the red back completely.
But we all know that that's deceptive.
You know, that that red is going to come back out a little bit.
But in this video, at least,
it looks like when it's fresh that the turtle jumps out.
It looks like that it worked well.
So now let's take a look.
Well, turn around his arm first.
I didn't do much in the back,
but now let's take a look at about six or seven months later.
Healed six or seven months, and here it is.
So you can see those reds did come back through,
but not as bold as as I might have expected.
I think the combination of really pushing my darks
and pushing my contrast my darks and lights in the turtle
and trying to knock those red reds back together
kind of served the purpose.
You know, I think it worked as a matter of fact,
I'll say I'll say that it worked better than I expected it to.
I really didn't know what to expect over months and months.
I knew that it would look fine as soon as I finished it.
But I'm pretty happy with how that transition in the background
kind of came together. It's a lot less stark.
I've knocked it back from a value standpoint.
I knocked it back from a color intensity standpoint, which I'm pretty happy with.
And then here are the two together,
and you can see that this was before I had started it on the left hand side,
and then the six or seven months healed on the right hand side.
And so it looks like it worked pretty well to me now.
In five years, ten years, 20 years.
How much of that red pulls back out?
How much of those darks
and the turtle kind of , the more that those kind of mute out.
Does the turtle fall back in the distance?
Well, time will tell.
Just,
you know, subscribe to our mailing list and I'll shoot you a 20 year healed photo.
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