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A spine on the neck: blastover over older tattoos
Vertebrae across the neck, throat and chest, laid over older work. This is a blastover, not a cover-up: the old tattoos do not vanish, they become the background.
A black spine runs down the neck and throat, and the ribs fan out over the shoulders and chest. All of it sits on older tattoos. Between the dense black vertebrae you can still see their soft gray background.
A blastover, not a cover-up
A cover-up is meant to hide the old tattoo. A blastover does something else: the new, dark composition takes the foreground, and the old work acts as texture underneath. When there are several older tattoos side by side, this is often a more honest solution than one huge patch trying to cover them all.
A drawing led by anatomy
The neck and the throat are places where the design has to follow the build of the body. The spine runs down the middle, and the ribs fan out symmetrically toward the collarbones and the shoulders. Before the work starts, I lay this composition out on the skin with a marker (freehand), right over the old tattoos. The marker photo in the gallery shows that stage: you can see how the new design works with the old, and it can still be changed before the first line is tattooed.
Before and after
I show the transition from old to new in a video, and the paired frames are on the before and after page. I set the number of sessions and the price of a blastover individually, after seeing a photo of the old tattoo.
Read more about the technique on the blastover page. I work in Warsaw at Good Sign Tattoo. The consultation and the sketch are free, and you can send photos of your old tattoos via the contact page.
Questions
FAQ
Is this piece a cover-up?
No, it is a blastover. In a cover-up the old tattoo is meant to disappear under the new work. Here a new, dark design sits over the old tattoos and does not hide them completely.
Will the old tattoos still show under a blastover?
Partly, and that is the point. How much depends on how dark and dense the old tattoo is and on the composition I draw. I promise neither that something will vanish nor that something will show.
Where can I see the before and after of this piece?
I have a video of the transition from old to new, and the paired frames are on the before and after page. You can also send me a daylight photo of your own tattoo, and I will tell you whether a blastover makes sense.
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