Covering scars with a tattoo.

[rosehiptea]

Time and Place: Roughly current time, northeast U.S. (probably Maine) Can make it somewhere else if it makes a big difference.

Googled: tattoos to cover scars, checked the Body Modification e-zine FAQ on tattooing and tried searching on the same term and on "scars" there.

Comments

[six_dollar_baby]

The short answer is: yes, but it depends

[rosehiptea]

Oh, thank you, that's very helpful. I appreciate the links.

[thirstyrobot]

I can give you a little bit of personal experience-- I asked a tattoo artist friend about getting tattooed over a surgical scar on my wrist. It was fairly new when I asked him about it and he told me scars are harder to tattoo over and I'd have to wait till it had healed up and faded some. If your character's scars are pretty old, I'd think she'd be able to get it done, but the tattoo probably won't hide the scars completely. I also found this-- (tw for self-injury) http://ask.metafilter.com/43498/My-past-always-haunts-me

[rosehiptea]

I can set the fic years after she got the scars, so that helps. And the link will help too -- thank you so much.

[dragonimp]

A friend of mine got a tattoo over a large surgery scar on her shoulder blade, so there are definitely tattoo artists who will do it and I think this was the first tattoo artist she spoke with. The tattoo didn't hide the scar so much as obscure it and distract from it. One thing she ran into during the tattooing process is that the scar is much less sensitive than the surrounding tissue; at one point when the needle moved from the scar to regular skin she jumped and marred the design.

[rosehiptea]

Interesting. Thank you, that helps. She's not really expecting to "erase" the scar, just hoping to distract from it and do something symbolic.

[marjun]

I remember reading some years ago about some women who had covered mastectomy scars with large tattoos.

[rosehiptea]

I found some pictures of that online actually. It looked quite good to me -- I just wasn't sure after seeing several comments along the lines of "No one reputable will do that." But it sounds like that is not in fact true.

[kitty5150]

I just got a piece done on my leg that went over a scar no problem. It was flat and small though.

The best tattoos over bigger scars I've seen didn't try to hide the scars so much as to incorperate them into the design so that they don't stand out as scars, just part of the design. Does that make sense? They're all tats I've seen in RL so I don't have links to anything online. But one was a fairly narrow line that became one tree branch of many, all beautifully shaded. IIRC correctly it took several touch-up sections and switching to a different brand of ink befiore it was deemed perfect.

[rosehiptea]

Something along those lines was what I was thinking. I have an idea what I want her to get and I think it will work out OK with the scars she has. Thank you.