discussion Adding white ink on an overshaded tattoo, advice?

[Before Today]

So I got my second tattoo of a male angel with wings. I love everything about it, except the right arm has too much shading it gets a bit hard to tell there is right hand over the there apart from the wings. I asked my tattoo artist if I should ignore it or something could be done to fix it a bit, and he advised me to add white ink to it but I have to wait for several weeks for my skin to heal. Fast forward, I got it redone a bit. But I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do  Anyone has experience with this? There was very minor bleeding experience during the tattoo redo process, maybe my skin couldn't take it lol. I'm a bit worried I might get keloid or something or I just ruined the tattoo and make it worse    The artist told me that it's gonna be okay though so maybe we should just trust him?

[Thief]

I had white shading done on my tattoos and they turned out fine, but I feel like the white faded really fast but overall, my tattoos still look great and detailed. I had the white shading done when I first got them done though and not at a later date. 
 

Here are my tattoos for reference:

 

 

 

 

[Vespertine]

I know it’s a moot point now, so this probably annoying of me to say, but… 

 

In the future, if you’re even remotely unhappy with the work a tattoo artist has done, I would 100% recommend getting a second opinion from another artist before letting the same artist add more ink. 

 

You shouldn’t have scarring unless too much pressure was applied. Ink over ink is fine. 

 

Bleeding is totally normal! Especially if they were using a shader. Everyone bleeds during the tattooing process, but you often don’t notice it until a few hours in (when you start bleeding more + shading is happening). There’s usually black ink pooling with your blood, so it’s harder to tell. With white ink, it’s normal that you’d be able to see blood. 

 

I wouldn’t fret too much until you see how it heals. Probably nothing to worry about. 

[Before Today]

23 minutes ago, Vespertine said:

I know it’s a moot point now, so this probably annoying of me to say, but… 

 

In the future, if you’re even remotely unhappy with the work a tattoo artist has done, I would 100% recommend getting a second opinion from another artist before letting the same artist add more ink. 

 

You shouldn’t have scarring unless too much pressure was applied. Ink over ink is fine. 

 

Bleeding is totally normal! Especially if they were using a shader. Everyone bleeds during the tattooing process, but you often don’t notice it until a few hours in (when you start bleeding more + shading is happening). There’s usually black ink pooling with your blood, so it’s harder to tell. With white ink, it’s normal that you’d be able to see blood. 

 

I wouldn’t fret too much until you see how it heals. Probably nothing to worry about. 

I never bleed before so I was a bit worried but you're right it's not even a week yet since the redo. My artist also said the same thing. I didn't use a wrap this time, he said I don't need it and it's gonna heal on its own just don't scrub it with soap too roughly. On the 2nd day my tattoo feels a bit bumpy, but it's probably the blood that's clotted. Here's to hoping it heals well. 

[Thief]

41 minutes ago, Before Today said:

I never bleed before so I was a bit worried but you're right it's not even a week yet since the redo. My artist also said the same thing. I didn't use a wrap this time, he said I don't need it and it's gonna heal on its own just don't scrub it with soap too roughly. On the 2nd day my tattoo feels a bit bumpy, but it's probably the blood that's clotted. Here's to hoping it heals well. 

All of my tattoos bled during my sessions, but it was just wiped away with the excess ink. Bleeding is completely normal, I mean, you’re having something carved into your skin. Most of my tattoos were wrapped, but I was told to take the wrapping off as soon as I got home so that they could be left to breathe. I’d gently wash them with water and a soap bar and then apply some tattoo balm and they all healed fine.

 

The bumps are normal, as most of it is just scabbing, that will naturally fall off by itself during the healing process. 

Edited April 19, 2023 by Thief

[Zox]

Omg the fact that I literally went through this myself this week lmao. 
 

White ink is thicker and always causes me to bleed whereas normal black ink doesn’t, so that’s normal! My artist also added waaay too much shading to my recent coverup that you basically couldn’t tell any of the details of the piece and I hated it. I asked him if we could add white to lighten it up but he advised against it (and I knew he would), because white ink has an extremely high chance of fading almost instantly and usually does nothing. 
 

For me, I noticed he did almost my entire piece in a dark grey ink, so going back I told him I want the entire thing touched up and re-outlined in pure black ink to bring out the details, and leave the grey shadowing as it was. I just got it done last week and you can already tell a major difference. 
 

You can try and add white ink on top of the black but from my research, there’s a low chance it’ll make a difference because of how it sits separately in the skin and how our body more easily gets rid of it. But it also doesn’t hurt to try knowing that. 

[Before Today]

2 hours ago, Thief said:

All of my tattoos bled during my sessions, but it was just wiped away with the excess ink. Bleeding is completely normal, I mean, you’re having something carved into your skin. Most of my tattoos were wrapped, but I was told to take the wrapping off as soon as I got home so that they could be left to breathe. I’d gently wash them with water and a soap bar and then apply some tattoo balm and they all healed fine.

 

The bumps are normal, as most of it is just scabbing, that will naturally fall off by itself during the healing process. 

I think I might have scrub the scab a bit too hard I feel like a part of skin came off with the scabs

[Hurem]

4 hours ago, Thief said:

Here are my tattoos for reference:

Your tattoos are so dope

 

Especially the Ghostface one!

[Thief]

40 minutes ago, Before Today said:

I think I might have scrub the scab a bit too hard I feel like a part of skin came off with the scabs

It should be fine, but you can always get  tattoos touched up because I have some trees on my arms that I got to fill in some space between my horror portraits and I had to get them retouched 2 times as they were just straight black and they kept healing patchy, which my artist said can be common with tattoos like mine, but they’re fine now. So I wouldn’t worry too much, you wouldn’t have caused irreversible damage if you have picked off a scab accidentally. 

[Thief]

40 minutes ago, Hurem said:

Your tattoos are so dope

 

Especially the Ghostface one!

Thank you! I love that one too. My tattoo artist also loves horror so he popped off a bit whilst doing those! 😅

Edited April 19, 2023 by Thief

[Alldeezy]

 

I've noticed I bleed the most with color ink other then black ink.  I got mine done the other day and I bleed quite a bit. Even though it's hard to tell since it was red ink

 

Bumps could be the old ink/skin/scabbing so dont stress.

 

I had a protected 2nd skin for first time and so much blood and old skin got stuck both times. So it could be just that.

[khalyan]

I have two tattoos with white ink and it's faded pretty quickly in general.  I had a fantastic artist do a piece on my leg with some white on it and the white is almost all gone at this point (however we planned for it to fade so it still looks fine).  I just don't know if adding the white ink would fix the tattoo longterm.