I looked at the pictures, neither looks bad, the tribal could do with being reworked. I can’t see the raised areas you are talking about.

Here are three things to consider.

1.) The artist screwed up. He went too deep on his lines which creates scarring. The scarring can occur WITHOUT color loss. When it occurs and your color is solid it creates a raised area. The worse the artst did, the worse the scarring.

However, this might not have been the case. In rare cases I run into people who have an adverse reaction to tattoos. Period. Which brings us to point to consider, #2.

2.) Some people have an adverse reaction to tattoos. When I say that, I mean they scar. Every time. This does not necessarily mean there will be color loss. In most cases its simply cosmetic. You find this with dark skinned people more often than not. I’ve never had the problem with Caucasions with work I’ve done, but I have seen it with work that other people have done. I don’t know if that was the case with them either.

Look at it like this. The artist is putting hundreds of thousands of needle holes in you very close together. In solid color fill, those needle holes overlap. What is created is a fresh wound. Some people when they heal… the process of healing, instead of rebuilding the tissue smoothly, rebuilds it in layers, creating the raised areas you describe. People who have a lot of melanonin in their body (creating dark skin tones) are more susceptible to this than those with lighter skin tones, but some light skin toned people are affected.

If the finished quality of the tattoo is not affected, and if there is no color loss or infection, I wouldn’t worry about it. See a dermatologist if you want a definitive answer.

But that might not be the case either, which brings us to point to consider #3.

3.) There are actually 2 things to consider here.

First is that you are having a minor allergic reaction to the pigments used. In other words, your body is reacting against the ingredients used in the pigments your artist prefers. To decide if this is the case, use a different brand of pigment from a different manufacturer. If this does not happen the next time, when you use the same artist, then there is a strong possibility that the pigment is the cause.

In which case, if there is no color loss or infection, don’t worry about it.

The other point here in this third point is related. Your body swells when it gets a tattoo. The swelling is concentrated on the lines, which is the most concentrated area of holes. Sometimes that swelling takes weeks to go down. It depends on your body chemistry and how you take care of your tattoo. Your body reacts first to the fact that you are torturing it by punching hundreds of thousands of holes into it, then it reacts to the fact that you are pushing a foreign substance into those holes. Thus you have swelling.

In most people that swelling goes down in three to four days. In some cases 1 to 2 weeks and in rare cases up to a month. Again, this is directly related to skin tone. The darker the skin the longer it takes to go down.

I’m sure there are other related issues, but I don’t know what they are.

It sounds like you’ll be just fine, and that you have nothing to worry about. Hope I helped a little.