srmccann94

5 hours ago, gtrjunior said:

Also...to address the question of walking in with a pic.
For an entire sleeve like you want it’s unrealistic to think that somebody could perfectly recreate a picture you found online.
You’re best bet is to talk to the artist and let them come up with a unique design that will be all yours!

Right I was only planning on showing some pictures for the sake of ideas/inspiration. I would also like to draw a mock up version of certain patterns/designs myself, but ultimately I was going to leave it to the artist to distill it all and come up with something awesome! Thanks for your comments.

1 hour ago, gtrjunior said:

Well you sort of made my point for me.
Had this been a big black panther that he wanted to cover then there’s no way.
But because they are light, small geometric shapes a good artist in this style could easily incorporate what is already there into a design that would work I the style the op wants to go with.

Do you know designing sleeves works? Is it just trial and error with the artist? Do they work on a stencil/drawing of it for a while? For all my current tattoos I'd just walk in with a picture, they print it out, make a stencil in about 5-10 minutes, then stick it on my arm and trace it. There was no adjusting or discussing it really and obviously there was no where near the level of intricacy of a geometric sleeve. So is it normal for the artist to work with someone a lot on a sleeve before even starting the actual tattooing process or is it something I need to figure out on my own?

4 hours ago, SStu said:

Quite a bit of that is pretty light. I think the need for lasering (or not) would highly depend on the artist's abilities/style/vision and how forgiving you want to be about some stray lines that might be in the background and mostly noticed only by you. 

Where do you live?

I live in a small mountain town. There's really only a handful of decent reputable artists and just one REALLY skilled one that I am hoping will do my potential sleeve.

5 hours ago, Hogrider said:

Good luck with that. The style OP is looking for contains a lot of blank space between intricate designs. It’s not like throwing a big black panther over something.

This is the main thing I'm worried about. I think it'd be problematic if the blank space was all skin tone, but what about gray or fading black gradients in between the black? I'm wondering if tattoo ink works in layers like painting a wall in your home so theoretically you could put gray on top of black and the gray would only show, OR if the dominant color (black) will always show on top. So in my case the black lines and stuff from my current tattoos.

So I thought I knew what I wanted with my tattoos, but as time has gone on I've grown to like them less and less. I really just want to get a geometric/psychedelic half sleeve but I'm wondering if its possible to cover up my currents tattoos and/or how difficult it would be. I know nothing about tattoo cover up.

Here are my tattoos, and one picture of an example of what I would like to cover it with if possible. Thanks in advance for the help!

I just found out I'm not supposed to use scented lotions. I got my first tattoo two weeks ago, and I've been using scented Lubriderm (Advanced Therapy) on it since day one. I was already concerned because after it scabbed up and the scab went away, it already seemed pretty faded. Its just in black, but the black seems significantly less dark now. I can't tell if I messed it up or if this is part of the healing process.

I've been washing with hand soapusing fingertips, rubbing with hot water, dabbing lightly with a paper towel, then immediately applying Lubriderm 3-4 times a day for the first 3-4 days. Then I cut back to washing and applying lotion 1-2 times a day. The amount of lotion I've been using is enough to where you can see a shiny layer on my skin but not so much that you see any white lotion itself.

I got another tattoo a week later, so on Wednesday, and I've been doing the same routine. But that one also seems to have faded already. I'm really stressing over it cause I can't tell if I messed up. Any help would be greatly appreciated!