As the title says really ?
I have seen many people now who’s tattoo’s are basically green, is that old style ink or something?
Also, if I want my tattoo to stay fresh and black am I going to have to get it redone every few years? (I know about treating a tattoo after getting it done… but i’m on about keeping it looking as fresh as the day you got it)
Look forward to hearing from you, Liam.
I’ve been told it has to do with the quality of the ink used, and the amount of sun exposure the tattoo receives in its lifetime. Apparently getting a tattoo done twenty years ago in the navy with a homemade tattoo gun in questionable hygienic conditions doesn’t translate to quality, long lasting ink.
Who knew?
Love. Peace. Metallica.
Knighthawk is actually right. A lot of it has to do with the quality of the ink. No matter what you do the tattoo is not going to look like it did the day it was done. This may not be exactly correct, but when you see the tattoo when it is just finished, everything is bright and bold. You are actually looking at a fresh and open wound. So in a sense you see the tattoo as it looks wide open.
When it heals you grow skin OVER the ink and so once it heals you are seeing the ink through a layer of skin, whick is one of the reasons it dulls as it heals.
Second, we have injected your skin with thousands of holes filled with ink. During the healing process your body attacks the pigment with your little soldiers…those white blood cells. That also has an effect on the color, but most important is that when you tan your skin tone darkens and the darker the skin tone the duller the color in contrast.
Repeated exposure to the sun has the same effect on ink pigments in your skin as it does on paper. It fades it out. UV radiation from the sun…or other sources…is bad for ink.
20 years ago inks were hit and miss, some stayed, some didn’t, depending on how the artist mixed them. When I first started tattooing we were still mixing our inks from powder. These days only rare artists bother with it. The quality of inks gets better every decade or so, and so inks are staying in better. Some inks are better quality than others, in other words the concentration of pigments and the quality of pigment used is so good that there is very little fading, but other inks are so poorly made, that they fade within weeks.
Hi
The other issue is that some inks contain traces of copper nitrate these were quite a large amount in older inks which gave some of the fading inks that green look.
Most modern pigments now are made from a synthetic base and if of a quality make will last a lot longer than cheaper pigments.
If you click on my sig there is a chapter on what tattoo ink is and what they can contain (and what to avoid).
Modern black pigments should not contain nitrate but usually have some form of oxide or graphite base anyhow it will be rare for it to turn green unless you really do go to extreme on the UV.
Take Care
Matthew
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