White Linework Over Blackwork At Two Years

Following up on the earlier post about tattooing colour over solid black tattoos, Sara Martin, a tattoo artist at Sacred Images in Bozeman, Montana showed me this tattoo, white linework over black. Actually, to be precise, it started as a red tattoo, which was covered up by a solid field of black, over which white linework was done. The black and white photo is the tattoo immediately after the white lines were done back in 2010, and the white lines are of course quite solid and opaque since it sits on the dead surface skin as well as the “mixed ink” living permanent skin layer that all the tattoo ink sits in. The photo on the right, the colour one, was taken today, about two years later. As you can see, the white linework has held up remarkably well and actually looks quite similar to scarification over black. Sara says that in parts of the white you can see the original red, but that it’s difficult to see that in the photo (and it may be something where you can only see it if you know where to look).

Click the picture to see it at higher resolution.