Inked Talk

Earlier this week Inked Talk featured an interview with Greg Foster of Custom Tattoo in Milwaukee, Wisconsin regarding his approach to tattoo cover up work. If you missed that interview, you can see it here. Today we continue talking to artists about their approaches to cover-up tattoo work with an interview with Studio of The Shop Tat2’s & Body Adornments in Darien, Wisconsin.

Tattooing began as a hobby eight years ago for Studio (whose real name is Tony), and in his years of experience he estimates that he has done cover up work on over a thousand tattoos. He sees cover-ups as both a challenge and a test of his own abilities as an artist.

Inked Talk: What special challenges do cover-ups present to you as an artist?

Studio: The challenge is to make the old tattoo disappear and that’s why I love doing them. I approach them a little differently because not just any design will work as a cover-up, and every cover-up is different. You have to work with the client and come up with something that they’ll want to use as a design. Many cover-ups take more than one sitting to complete, and not all colors will work for cover-ups.

I like to use purples and greens, some blues and a little red sometimes for my cover-ups. I like to use the darker pigments for the cover-up and use brighter pigments away from the darker ones to take peoples’ eyes off the darker and make them focus on the brighter pigments. The object of a cover-up is to make the tattoo disappear and by doing that you use a bigger image to distract the old tattoo that you are covering-up - make the people looking at the new tattoo look away from the old image that’s not there anymore.

IT: In your experience, are most cover up requests simply to cover bad or poorly aged work? Or do you get a lot of ex-girlfriend names or gang symbol type cover ups too?

Studio: A combination of all of them, but lately I’ve been covering-up bad tattoos and ex-boyfriend’s / ex-girlfriend’s names. Next week I have a cover-up to do of both: It is a heart with a guy’s ex-wife’s name in it. He wants me use a set of praying hands (to cover it up) so that will be a fun one.

A Name Tattoo “Before:”

A Flower “After:”

IT: What is the most memorable or significant cover up that you have done?

Studio: It’s actually one that I’m in the process of working on right now. It is on one of my artist’s legs. He’s got a bunch of crap tattoos and I’ve been working on the cover-up for the past few months now - it is a whole lower leg sleeve/sock. The whole thing is probably going to take in the area of fifty to sixty hours to complete, and its probably the hardest tattoos that I’ve had to cover-up. It is definitely challenging my ability, but I’m always down for a challenge. That’s why I love cover-ups.

Great band, but not the wisest word for a tattoo:

A much better choice:

It was a pleasure to talk with both artists who contributed to this week’s Inked Talk special on cover up tattoos. Thanks Studio, and thanks again Greg!

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Wine Outlook