Two months ago I had to euthanize my dog that I raised from 8 weeks because he had bone cancer. Of course I knew I would have to say goodbye some day so 3 years ago I got him to stand on an ink pad and then on paper. A tattoo of his paw print would be a tribute to the 14 years we spent together. I’ve always known where I was going to put it. I spent much time thinking about placement, detailed or solid, etc. I had it done yesterday at a place with a very high rep after a 6 week wait. I got a little stressed because I spent so much time thinking about the paw print, I hadnt considered putting his name or an epitaph on it. The artist stenciled the original on and free handed his name under it and after I stared at it in the mirror, I went with no name for now, I can do it later after I decide how I want it. When it was done, I wasnt ecstatic because of the angle I had chosen. Then today when I took the bandage off, I felt really good about it, in part because now he would always be close to my heart in more ways than one. Then it dawned on me – it isnt my dog’s paw print, it looks generic. There is almost no space in the center of his print. Yes, I should have caught it from the stencil but I get tunnel vision real bad. Ok, Im a retard. What do ya’ll think?. Am I crazy or are the two miles apart? Big question is, is there anything I can do about it, artistically or otherwise? I am fuckin beside myself. Instead of feeling a little better about losing him, I feel awful because thats not my dog! A real setback. What a bummer.
Well, it’ll take you a month or two to see the real outcome of that tattoo (it’ll fade a lot) but no.. you’re right.. that paw print is almost nothing like the original.
What you can do, if you so choose (and I wouldn’t recommend it) is do everything you’re not supposed to do to a new tattoo. Suntan, hit a swimming pool and so forth.. it might speed the fading process a bit, but honestly I think if you really don’t like that tattoo your only viable option is to get it lasered (in several months) down to next to nothing, and then redone by someone properly good.
Hopefully cornish will pipe in on this one and correct me if I’m wrong, but with enough laser treatments, you can get it faded down to so faint that the new stuff can be tattooed over it. That being said, your tattoo idea doesn’t exactly lend itself to being used as a cover-up.. the original design is very faint as it is.
It’s going to take A LOT of laser treatments and A LOT of money to fade that thing down to usable level to be covered by your paw print. Perhaps the wiser course would be to put something else over that paw print (still need lasering… a bunch of it) that actually covers better, and putting your paw print someplace else.
OMG, I cant believe this has turned into such a clusterfuck. Faint isnt a problem, the only mandatory thing is the freakin outline of the pads and the relationship between the 5 shapes. Hell, I was originally gonna do it solid black. Any insight as to how an artist could screw it up this bad? This is the stencil I made to decide on placement and Im as much of an artist as Wile E. Coyote is.
Sorry for all the stupid questions, I am in shock. My memorial has turned into a mockery.
Well, I definitely prefer the ‘fingerprint’ style of the faint pad as it is in your design, but if all black okay then you’re in much better shape. A laser session or two, and you could just make the paw print bigger (of course, that wouldn’t exactly be your paw print either, strictly speaking) and it would incorporate the old into the new.
You should, however, do some sketch work with your Wile E. Coyote skillz, and compare the stencil to your current one. If a certain size of your original design actually covers what you already got, you could get it completely black and it would cover the entire thing.. but of course you’d have to wait a few weeks to let yours heal a bit. In fact, that artist might even fix it up for free for you… if you trust him not to make it even worse.
You should, however, do some sketch work with your Wile E. Coyote skillz, and compare the stencil to your current one. If a certain size of your original design actually covers what you already got, you could get it completely black and it would cover the entire thing.. but of course you’d have to wait a few weeks to let yours heal a bit. In fact, that artist might even fix it up for free for you… if you trust him not to make it even worse.
ArniVidar, I think you saved the day. I got my Acme rocket jet pack tools out of the big wooden crate and went to work. There is the stencil laying on top of the tattoo. The only ink showing is the little blob south of pad 5 and the right side and bottom of pad 1. I put both photos in a browser, each in their own tab and kept switching back and forth between the two. Now check me out on this – the gradient is top to bottom, so as long as pads 3 and 4 get lighter as they extend down, that should work. Pad 2 will gobble up its ink and that gradient can continue to get lighter to the bottom and darker towards center. Pad 5 will have to rotate a wee bit clockwise and get nudged down some. Im not sure what that gradient needs to do. This will be authentic enough because if my dog had shifted his weight a little, it wouldve looked exactly like that.
I wouldve loved to do the fingerprint style, line by line, but I couldnt afford the all that work.
It could certainly work, but I’m not liking the blob on pad 1. As you say, pad 5 might be more or less doable with some creative thinking, but #1…
You think the gradient is the way to go then?
Here’s a different concept for you. May not work at all outside my brain, but:
Get the pads in solid black (no helping that with this concept), then design a grey drop-shadow, so as to make the black lift off the skin a bit. All pads would thus get MORE shading, but very light. This new drop shadow would cover the extra blob on #1 and #5, assuming that it heals relatively light.
Like I say, I’m not sure it could work, though.
That’s very feasilble. You need to look at degree of difficulty here, for sure.
When I looked at the “fingerprint” versus the tattoo, other than the fact that the individual lines on the pads were missing (which would have been a very difficult process to begin with) is that all of the extra filler from the ink was from your dogs fur on his feet, not from his pads.
So, in reality, you DO have a tattoo of his paw print, just not all the detail of the hairs between his toes and such.
What you could do, is maybe some combination of shade work as Arni suggests above, and maybe even have the little hair “marks” or “spots” or whatever you want to call them added in the spaces around and between the pads? I think that might achieve the detail you are looking for without completely re-doing the whole tattoo.
Don’t fret too much, it IS a tattoo of your dogs paw. Its just up to you how much you want it to look exactly like the print you made.
Sorry I am so late I have been away working with the Wall of Death like you do!
Let the first tattoo heal for 8 weeks, find yourself a really good laser tech in a tattoo studio preferably.
Get two or three hits across the tattoo over 4 months and sit back and wait another 8 weeks.
You should get enough of that out in a couple of hits to let a great rather than good artists do the tattoo you wanted in the first place and the time it takes to sort the mess out will give you time to find an artist and work of at least some of his or her waiting list.
You can of course rush into getting your second choice tattoo slapped over the mistake but its a tribute to your beloved dog, so why would you?
Peace.
sorry for the loss of your dog…
you mentioned you didnt check the stencil, that was a mistake, when someone is putting ink in my dermal layer I make sure it is what I want…….
the hack you hired used a generic stencil and didnt even consider your paw print, this is the type of hack that permiates this industry now, he wanted his pay and didnt care about what you needed……..probably couldnt have done a decent job anyway
but you chose this hack also, it is ultimately our responsibility to locate, meet with and choose our artist.
the only thing you could do now is laser, wait 6 months and do this right
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