When an Old Tattoo Becomes a New Image

Two cover-up case studies: Évi and Péter

For me, a cover-up is more than placing a new design over an old tattoo. First, I want to understand what the client would genuinely like to wear. Then I look at how we can work with the existing pigment, the composition, and what the skin can tolerate. These two projects show that approach at different levels of difficulty.

1. Évi’s back – when the entire tattoo needs to be rethought

Évi came to me about a year ago because she wanted to renovate an old tattoo on her back. At our first meeting, it was clear that simply refining the existing work would not solve the problem. The anatomy and proportions of the woman’s face were so far off that adding more detail would only have produced a more polished version of a bad tattoo.

So I approached it from another direction. My first question was not, “What does the old tattoo allow me to do?” It was, “What tattoo would Évi actually like to see on her back?” I asked her to choose a face she truly liked. I did not want the tattoo already on her skin to limit our ideas from the beginning. First, we needed to decide where we wanted to go; then we could work out how to get there technically.

We found a face that appealed to both of us. That was when the real design process began.

[IMAGE 02 – The face reference that both Évi and I liked.]

Turning a three-dimensional back into a two-dimensional plan

With a correction of this size, I need to know precisely where the difficult parts of the old tattoo are. I marked the necessary outlines with a felt-tip pen, then used adhesive book-cover film to take a two-dimensional tracing from the three-dimensional surface of her back.

I photographed that tracing and used it as a background layer in Procreate. I was no longer designing on a blank canvas: I could see exactly where the old lines and dark areas would sit beneath the new face, hair, background, and other elements. Only then could I properly position the new face over the existing tattoo.

[IMAGE 03 – A fuller view of the back before the redesign.]

[IMAGE 04 – The applied drawing and the planned lines of the composition.]

Not every area needs the same amount of attention

I drew on the visual world of Alphonse Mucha for the background. That decision was not purely aesthetic. When correcting a large tattoo that has gone wrong, I think it is extremely important to direct the viewer’s attention. The goal is not necessarily to give every square centimetre of the back the same level of detail. The image needs a visual centre that naturally draws the eye.

In this case, that centre was clearly the face. If the main subject is strong, beautiful, and richly detailed, it is what the viewer notices first. The surrounding elements support and frame it. They also draw attention away from areas where the old tattoo leaves us less room to work. That is why I built a Mucha-inspired framework around the face.

First, I needed to unify the old face

I knew I would have to reshape the original face considerably. One of my first steps was therefore to work over the whole area with a lighter, warm flesh tone. I used Georgia Peach and some slightly darker, browner and more orange skin tones.

My aim was to make the old lines and tones more uniform and establish a new colour layer from which I could build the face.

[IMAGE 05 – The first colour layers and the reshaped face. The background is still unfinished.]

This brings us to one of the most important technical aspects of a cover-up: layering. I work with coil machines, and my hand moves relatively quickly. I use coil machines for shading, colouring, and lining. For me, the spring action of these machines is particularly useful in projects like this. With the right settings and technique, I can build up several layers in a controlled way without putting unnecessary stress on the skin.

That matters enormously in a cover-up. The old tattoo is not always covered in a single pass. I work layer by layer. At each later session, I check where the old tattoo is beginning to show through again and return to those areas where necessary.

How I handle the ink is also part of the technique

I generally prefer thicker pigments for this kind of work. This detail is mainly for fellow tattoo artists.

While working, I prepare several ink caps and keep the same number of caps filled with diluent. I usually use witch hazel. When a thick pigment starts to dry in the tube, I can hear the change in the sound of my coil machine: it begins to run differently. I briefly dip the needle into the diluent, which helps loosen the thickened pigment and bring it back to a workable consistency.

It may sound like a small detail, but during a long cover-up carried out over several sessions, details like this add up.

The composition continued to develop as we worked

As we moved down the back, another problem became apparent. The enormous fan in the centre occupied too much space as one continuous element. It needed something to break up that surface visually, without adding yet another disconnected motif to an already complex composition.

That is where the idea of a cherry blossom branch came from.

I imagined the flowers painted on the fan stepping out into the world around it. Falling blossoms and petals could reappear elsewhere in the tattoo. I placed some near the shoulder and others in the lower areas. The same motif began to connect distant parts of the image, giving the whole piece a more coherent structure.

[IMAGE 06 – An intermediate stage: the new face and fan are in colour, while the lower areas still need work.]

During the final session, I mainly worked on the two old dragons at the bottom. I improved them and brought them into the new colour scheme as far as the original work allowed.

[IMAGE 07 – The completed back piece: blossoms, face, and lower dragons brought together in one composition.]

Making something disappear is not always the goal

For me, this may be the most important lesson from the project. A cover-up does not always have to begin with the question, “How can I make what is there disappear?” Often, a better question is, “How can I reorganise the whole image so the old tattoo no longer determines what we see?”

In this case, we kept some elements, completely rebuilt others, created a new focal point, added a new background, and layered the areas where the old work continued to show through over several sessions.

I do not see the result as merely an improved version of the old tattoo. It is a new image that incorporates the parts of the original worth keeping.

I chose this work as the first in the series because, although it looks like a major transformation, I would still consider it one of the easier cases from a technical perspective. The following examples start from much more difficult tattoos and show how far an unsuccessful piece can sometimes be transformed.

2. Péter’s case – “There’s no way you can cover that”

Péter travels to me from Vienna. We met around 2012 during a guest spot there. Somehow, I then “inherited” him as a client, and over the years I have made several large tattoos for him, including an enormous Chinese mask on his stomach. He already had a well-executed skull tattoo on his chest, so a more consistent overall collection of work was beginning to take shape.

One thing, however, increasingly bothered me. On the right side of his chest, extending onto his arm, was an older tattoo inspired by the biomechanical world of H. R. Giger. The idea itself was interesting, but the execution was far removed from the fine graphic quality we associate with Giger’s work. It had been made in an old-school manner: thick outlines, heavily worked lines, and large areas filled with a fairly uniform mid-tone.

[IMAGE 08 – The original biomechanical tattoo extending from the chest onto the arm.]

[IMAGE 09 – A close-up of the original woman’s face and the old outlines.]

As we approached the end of the work on Péter’s stomach, that one tattoo stood out more and more from everything around it. Its style and quality belonged to a completely different world. I found myself glancing at it during every appointment.

Eventually, I persuaded Péter that we should do something about it. He was sceptical. He did not really believe anything could be done with a tattoo so full of dark areas, thick lines, and mid-tones. I thought I could solve it.

My first step was to even out the contrast

At the end of one session on his stomach, I told him, “Bear with me for another half hour. I’m going to go over the whole thing with grey.”

That was the first step in the cover-up. I chose a mid-grey that was lighter than the darkest parts of the old tattoo but darker than its light areas, and I worked across the entire surface. At that stage, the aim was not to hide the old tattoo. I wanted to reduce the contrast within it.

The dark outlines appeared visually lighter, while the lighter areas became darker. I wanted a more uniform mid-tone surface that would give me a different foundation for the new work.

Then I sent Péter home. I did not want to continue working on the area immediately. We needed to wait for it to heal fully. We gave it roughly one or two months before starting the new tattoo.

I did not start by looking for an even darker design

In the meantime, we looked for an image that we both liked. Eventually, we chose a woman’s face.

From a conventional cover-up perspective, it might not have seemed the easiest choice. Much of the new face was light, while beneath it sat a dark, contrasting tattoo already carrying a great deal of pigment. By then, however, I had been tattooing for twenty-three years, and I felt that experience gave me a strong enough foundation to attempt it.

Using white over the old dark tattoo

After establishing the dark parts of the new composition, I began working across the entire face with a fairly dense white pigment. At this stage, I deliberately did not treat every detail of the old tattoo as a separate problem. I did not try to find an individual solution for each old line. I treated the whole area as one surface.

I worked steadily and densely, building up more than one layer within the session where the skin allowed it. Then I sent Péter home to heal again.

[IMAGE 10 – An early intermediate stage: the lines of the new face are in place, while the old tattoo still shows through.]

During the next session, the features that gave the new face its character began to take shape: the eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, shadows, and finer tones. By then, the old tattoo had lost a surprising amount of its visual strength, but it had certainly not disappeared completely. One of the intermediate photographs shows this particularly well. The outline of the previous mouth and a few other details were still visible through the new work.

This is where one of the most important parts of a cover-up comes in: patience.

[IMAGE 11 – Péter’s intermediate photograph: the new portrait is clear, but parts of the old tattoo are still visible.]

As the problem gets smaller, the work can become more precise

During the first sessions, I was working on a very large area. As the new tattoo developed, fewer areas remained where the old pigment caused a real visual problem. The focus of the work narrowed accordingly.

Towards the end, I could concentrate on very small areas using progressively smaller needles. In some places, I used an opened-up seven-needle round liner to work the pigment in densely and precisely.

There is a technical point here that I consider particularly important in cover-up work: the aim is not to work as deeply as possible. I try to place the new pigment in a controlled way while treating the skin gently. One sign I watch for is unnecessary bleeding. I do not want to damage the skin just to force more pigment into it. I build the result carefully, densely, and in stages.

In my own practice, I have found that in suitable cases, a light pigment—even white—can significantly reduce the visibility of a dark tattoo underneath. It is not the result of one aggressive pass. Pigment application, healing, and corrections at later sessions all contribute. At the same time, we cannot determine the exact depth of the old and new pigment in a finished tattoo simply by looking at it.

Healing is as much a part of the technique as tattooing

We let the area rest again for one or two months, perhaps even three. On a project like this, what matters is not how quickly I want to finish. The skin needs time to recover, and that process cannot be rushed without consequences.

Only after healing can I properly judge which old marks have become visible again, where another layer is needed, and where we have already achieved what we wanted. Péter then came back for the final session. I worked through the remaining problem areas and completed the tattoo.

[IMAGE 12 – Details of the refined face near the end of the process.]

[IMAGE 13 – The finished chest tattoo in the context of the surrounding work.]

[IMAGE 14 – A close-up of the final portrait.]

“There’s no way you can do that”

There is another part of this story that I find particularly interesting. Péter was also having his leg tattooed at another studio in Vienna. When the artists there saw what we had started on his chest, he told me they laughed at the idea. According to Péter, they said it could not be done and that he should forget it before the situation became worse.

But Péter had known me for about fourteen years by then. He had seen my work and knew how I approached a project. He trusted me and stayed with the process. The result is there in the photographs.

I like this case because it clearly shows how I think about cover-ups. We do not always have to accept that a dark tattoo can only be covered by an even darker one. Sometimes we first need to solve a different problem: reduce the contrast, make the surface more uniform, establish a new foundation, let it heal, and build the next layer. Then we let it heal again and return with increasing precision to the smaller areas where the old work is still visible.

This was a considerably more demanding project than the transformation of Évi’s back. But it was still not the most difficult case.

Why isn’t laser treatment my first choice?

Layering matters to me partly because, in suitable cases, it can avoid the lengthy, expensive, and often uncomfortable process of laser lightening or removal.

I am not opposed to laser treatment. Some tattoos genuinely need it, and the next case study will be about one of them. But I do not want every consultation to begin with, “This has to be lasered first.”

If the amount of existing pigment, the condition of the skin, and the proposed new composition allow it, I first ask whether the problem can be solved through tattooing.

There is another reason for this. Skin needs adequate recovery time after laser treatment. My multi-session layering technique already places significant demands on it, so I do not begin building multiple layers of pigment over a recently lasered area. When laser lightening is necessary, it needs to be planned as part of the entire cover-up process, with suitable healing periods.

This is not a technique for beginners

I want to emphasise this, especially for tattoo artists reading the article. Layering does not mean repeatedly working an area until the old tattoo disappears. That is exactly what must be avoided.

When building several layers of pigment, you need to judge how much that particular person’s skin can tolerate during that particular session. You need to know when you can return to an area and, just as importantly, when to stop and let it heal.

If the skin is overworked and the tissue is significantly damaged, scarring may follow. At that point, you are no longer dealing only with an old, unsuccessful tattoo. You are trying to solve the same problem on scarred, altered skin. The original challenge has become much harder. That is why I do not recommend this technique to inexperienced hands.

Tattoo artists who would like to learn more about how I work with the machine, skin, and pigment can explore these technical questions through my InkControl training (https://www.redliontattoo.com/inkcontrol)⁠.

If you contact me about a cover-up

There is something I also want prospective clients to know. A serious cover-up is much more demanding for me than creating a new tattoo. I have to keep both the old and new images in mind, watch how the earlier pigment and skin respond, assess the healed layers, and often return to the same problem over several appointments.

For that reason, I only take on a limited number of these projects. I usually work on one or, at most, two major cover-ups at a time, so there may be a wait before we can begin.

If you have a tattoo that seems hopeless, you are still welcome to contact me. Even if someone has already told you, “That can’t be covered,” I would like to see it before making that judgement. You can reach me through redliontattoo.com (https://www.redliontattoo.com/)⁠.

The next case required laser lightening as well. That project started from a very different situation.

Timár Ottó · Red Lion Tattoo