I'm Tattooing My Entire Body Black
TATTOO artist Michela Bottin-Ackerman is 95% covered in tattoos - and about 75% of her body is coated in black ink. Besides that, she also has several body modifications such as a split tongue, pointed ears and tattooed eyeballs. The 32-year-old currently resides in New York, but is originally from a small town in Italy, where she got her first tattoo as a teenager. Michela started out with very colourful tattoos, which is what she now specialises in as a successful tattooist. But slowly Michela’s cartoon and animal inspired body art made place for big patches of black ink. She told Truly: “I started to black out my body as a last resort for a cover up, and it felt good, I actually liked it, I planned another session for the arms and since then I have gotten more and more.” Having her skin blackened out has given Michela a lot of confidence, she explains that her addiction to this type of tattoo is because she felt uncomfortable being addressed as the “pretty girl” - wanting to erase the superficiality.
Aftercare was a eureka moment. Tattoo bandage films in my aftercare changed the outcome of my tattoos for the better. I have completely upped the quality of my heals.
I would hang out at a convention and see some of my heroes’ healed work and scratch my head thinking: “how the hell did they get that smoothness, saturation and crispness?” I then happened to start using a particular brand of tattoo bandage films on my clients in my aftercare routine and when the first piece came back healed - there was the answer. “Ohhhhh that’s how they get those results!” Simple and fast healing
Not only does it introduce simplicity for the customer and shorten the healing time, to me it seems it minimizes the “fresh versus healed gap.”
This particular brand of tattoo bandage film keeps the black smooth and dark, your mid- and light tones stay intact, whereas they could get washed out or your skin could push the ink out. I feel if you have a customer with more challenging skin to work with, or if things tend to wash out on them (which, as you all know, certain things are out of our control with skin behavior) it tends to remediate that. Some people heal naturally and very true to the fresh product, but with others there is a differential that is more significant when the tattoo is healed from the fresh piece.
Sometimes no amount of knowledge and technique can change that. When using those bandages I feel it really tightens up that healing differential gap. And if you have a customer that has magic skin to work on and would naturally heal amazing and you use the bandage to heal...the result is incredible.
