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| Side to front view of the peonies, done in high color, reworking and updating an old Oriental style |
I've been mulling over this blog topic for a few weeks now, pondering its different aspects and angles -- tattooing and scars. The more I thought about it, the more there seemed needed to be mulled over and uncovered and though this post might be glossing over many things, hopefully it would shed
some light to the readers about not only how we work as artists but how people operate in general.
Sounds cryptic? Well, bear with me for a bit here. Back in the US, we often saw a lot of clients come into the shop wanting to hide scars -- whether they be surgery or badly healed old injuries or wounds or reminders of unpleasant occurrences or accidents in the past. It seemed slightly ironic to me to have to help conceal these with a tattoo -- for all intents and purposes, a tattoo, after all, just happens to be a decorated kind of scar upon the skin.
Each person bears different and unique characteristics upon their skin. Every case, thus, is unique. Scar tissue, in general, tends to be less kind to tattoo ink than 'normal' skin...in some cases, they tend to reject ink altogether and the result is a little less than pretty. However, we've also seen a good number of beautiful examples where scars have been successfully covered up and the area beautified. Ultimately, there is one thing to understand: Not all scars can be fixed with a tat, and clients cannot (always) expect miracles.
There is no hard and fast rule that this procedure is always successful so please understand in certain cases when your tattoo artist (I'm speaking in general terms) prefers not to touch the area, he/she is doing it for a good reason. I would be a little more leery if the artist isn't prepared to offer input to 'fixing the problem' and instead, straightaway promises that yes, we can hide the scar, yes you won't be able to tell it was ever there, yes we can do it and please put your money down now.
Personally, I would look at healed areas and certain surgical scars and even then, make calculations as to what to do and not to do to the area. Like I said earlier, every case is unique.
In one memorable one back in Augusta, a military wife came to me with multiple spot keloids, all disfigured and highly raised, in different and displaced areas on her torso. She wanted them covered up. After explaining to her the issues at hand, we opted instead of covering the scars with ink, we'd work a design around the scarred area so as to distract the eye from all the keloids and zoom in onto a pretty
tattoo instead. I drew up a floral design of hibiscuses (she spent some time in Hawaii when she was in the US Army) and ran snaking vinework around the keloid areas.
I would never forget the change in her that I saw with my very eyes. When she first came in for a consultation, she hated her body (at the time, she was a high-end Atlanta bartender, in her 40s, with a figure girls half her age would envy). We pulled all our curtains in my private booth and I spent five minutes having to persuade her to even lift her shirt to show me what I had to work with. I took measurements, got to drawing and when she came for the tattoo itself, she began to lose much of the "I hate my body" attitude that she first came in with. She got a little more confident after we put the stencil on her and freehanded some of the vines around the keloids.
By the time I was done with the lining and shading, prior to putting in the colours, on her tattoo, she was literally walking around outside the shop in her sports bra during her cigarette break, quietly enjoying the appreciative looks she got from many a person and not caring whether she had scars or not. In her mind, she
later told me, she no longer had the scars, just the memories of how she got them. She left that day, a far happier person. In fact, she made me take a picture of it and sent the image along to her husband who was deployed to the Middle East. We also got a large number of referrals from her, from that experience! Me, I was just really thankful that I got the opportunity to make someone's life a little better, as I hope to do each time I kick on the tattoo machine.
A little more recently and closer to home, US Skin Grafx got a call from a Malaysian woman a couple of months back. Yvonne (not her real name) came for a consultation, and showed me a series of surgical scars on her ankles, feet and legs that she wanted covered up. Thinking she was involved in some sort of accident, I asked her what had happened.
"I am partially disabled," she told me. "I have spina bifida; and have lived with it since birth." Spina bifida, I later researched and discovered, is a congenital condition in which the spine and backbone canal do not close prior to birth.
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| An initial rose sketch (which was KO'ed)! |
Again, with Yvonne, she wanted all of the scars covered up with a design. In areas where we could do so successfully, I agreed to draw upon the affected skin. In the scarred area where it was wiser not to mess with, I suggested going around the areas and making it colourful. We pondered a phoenix, and then roses and finally finalised on peonies, in a half-modern, half-Nyonya style pattern. I was stoked. I have Nyonya blood (via Penang) and the culture, its style and indeed, art, have always spoken to me.
When she came for her tattoo, Yvonne cheerfully said to me, "Don't worry about me. I've had so many operations, I can't feel a thing around the area you're about to ink." I did tell her to communicate with me at all times how she was doing. Because of the unique nature of this client and the extra demands it put (more time, greater attention to her wellbeing, etc), I closed the shop to everyone else for that day and deferred any consultation requests to another day. We started, quietly enough. Since I hate working in silence, just like I dislike surly artists who discourage conversation, we started talking albeit in a desultory manner.
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| Fnished side view of Yvonne's peonies. Note, for certain scars, it's better to work around and not on the skin. |
We talked about a lot of things. About jobs (she is one of those silent-but-true backbone types in a major government organisation), family, husbands, ambitions, hopes and disappointments. We talked about jobs, food, travels, politics, technology, economy, futures and beliefs. She was there a good few hours. Through it all, I discovered someone to admire. This was a person who took her disadvantages with equanimity and lived her life on her own terms. Never once did she place blame on any person or circumstances for her lot in life. I had the impression that life wasn't always a lot of fun or kind, but it wasn't a big tragedy.
The prevailing impression I had from that talk was that if life knocked you down, you just picked yourself up, dusted the dirt off your ass and moved on. So what if you had a few scars along the way? It wasn't a big deal. They are only an issue if you make them an issue.
"Yes, lah, I am cacat!" she said, laughing. (cacat in direct translation means 'lame' in the Malay language) I detected no sadness, no bitterness. Just an "oh well, shit happens but I'm ok so don't you fret about anything" attitude. I've met a lot more people born with full capacity of brain and limbs who complain a hell of a lot more than she ever did. I was slightly ashamed that I've whined a lot easier over far smaller things. And to help not only herself, but others who may have spina bifida,she has started a support group for those similarly afflicted. The reason why she wanted her leg tattooed was that she was a little conscious of her surgical scars when she went swimming, and wanted people to look at her tattoo, not her scars.
Getting back to the tattoo and stopping the rambling :) , we put peonies, tribal-like curls from her foot to the area above her ankle, curving around the ankle bone. We added in colour (Randy custom mixed some of the purples). She didn't move at all. We stopped once, for a drink of Coke. After everything was said and done, she hopped off the bed, walked to the mirror, told me she loved it. As for the remaining scars, it was a non-issue.
"After this, what are your plans?" I asked her.
"After this, I'm going home and making dinner," she told me.
What I never told her, though, was what a humbling experience it was meeting her. And what an honour it was, to ink her. Hopefully, she'll call to catch up one day. Wherever Yvonne is, we sincerely wish her the best.
