Heavy Scars Over Heavy Black

Can’t thank chasethebeard enough for submitting this! I’m always a fan of scars over black but this really looks amazing!

black scarification

Artist Credit Chase Suarez

This seems to be a cover up, and a hell of a way to cover something in my opinion! Solid black over existing tattoos sometimes will leave you with a “ghost” of the covered tattoo where you can see the lines underneath. The scars here really do wonders to break up an outline!

The Un-Friday Followup?

I know Rob made a tradition of posting scar follow-ups on Fridays, but I’ve never been good at planning things, and better at doing things when inspiration strikes, so I’m going to post a couple more followups today instead of waiting until week’s end.

This first one is “selective ink rubbing” that Brandon Pearce of Foolish Pride Tattoo Company (foolishpridetattoo.com) in St. Petersburg, Florida did eight months ago. In these pictures you can see it fresh, then at three months, and finally as it is now, at eight months into the healing. As you can see, it’s a normal cutting, but he’s rubbed ink into parts of it (the glasses, eyelashes, and barrette/bow) to accentuate the design, a technique that he’s used in a number of scars he’s done. Click to take a closer look at any of the stages.

brandon-pearce-ink-rubbing-1t brandon-pearce-ink-rubbing-2t brandon-pearce-ink-rubbing-3t

I also wanted to show a blackwork-vs-scar sleeve that he’s been slowly building up with linework scars of vegetation like leaves and flowers. You really can’t go wrong with scars over blackwork!

brandon-pearce-blackwork-cutting-1t brandon-pearce-blackwork-cutting-2t

Women’s Chin Scars

I don’t want to call these “scarred mokos”, because that would be culturally insensitive, inaccurate, and crass, but when I see these wonderful bold yet feminine facial skin peels done by Iestyn Flye of London’s Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com), I can’t help but be reminded of women’s facial tattooing among the Maori. There is a long multicultural tradition of tattooing and scarification around the chins and mouths of women being seen as extremely beautiful — the Ainu and the Inuit immediately sprint to mind as well. This reminds me, somewhat unrelated, there is a wonderful APTN/CBC documentary that you can watch online titled “In pursuit of the lost tradition of Inuit Tattooing“.

Speaking of Iestyn’s work, I’ve mentioned his “scaled” designs before, but he recently did a set that have a double-lined border that I was particularly enamored with. I’m very excited about seeing how these turn out. It’s quite fine cutting, so the scarring will be minimal, but I’m sure they’ll still have a great tactile nature.

Humpback Whale White Ink Cutting

I have been watching this humpback whale scar by Brenno Alberti of BodyFactory in Trieste, Italy with great pleasure. First of all, because he’s pumped up the normal cutting over blackwork effect by a level by rubbing the cutting with white ink — I suspect this will be differentiated from normal cutting by the detail in the finer parts of the linework — but more importantly because I just love the design and it’s pristinely cut. By the way, sometimes it just amazes me how quickly scars heal — it looks so great on day three — but I suspect that with this piece the white ink is creating a bit of an illusion.

By the way, I don’t have an ink rubbing of a humpback whale, but believe-it-or-not, but I have rubbed a humpback whale. Click the pic for a closer look.