J.
(Escrever aqui algo sobre essas duas coisas que podemos escolher fazer no nosso corpo: cicatrizes por self-inflicted cuts ou…
… tatuagem. Nenhum eh melhor ou pior. São dois jeitos de lidar com o que acontece dentro da gente.)
“Our first skin, we are born with it; the second one, we chose.”
This is a sentence I saw in the 90’s on a Tattoo Magazine called “Metalhead” I used to buy in São Paulo, Brasil (or, better: I used to ask my mother to buy it for me, because I was in the first decade of my life back then. Yes, that’s how long I love tattoos for.)
Outro começo: I have been tattooing J. since 2017. They literally went to all my tattoo studios. My story with them is super tender, because most of the work we did was scars cover-ups. I feel super grateful when someone trusts me to the point of laying still on my tattoo bed while I basically put their bodies through physical discomfort in the same spot where they once feel another kind of pain.
(Escrever um texto sobre como I relate to this e como eu também passei a me tatuar ao inves de me cortar. Como cicatrizes pra mim também são memorias e as vezes a gente não quer mais lidar com aquelas memórias explicitas que estão com a gente e tudo bem. Podemos transformá-las.
E que lindo que tatuagem existe pra gente poder transformar nosso corpo. “Nossa primeira pele a gente nasce com ela. A segunda, a gente escolhe”, falar algo com essa frase. As vezes as cicatrizes que colocamos na nossa própria pele não são escolhas de fato, mas mais uma response a algo traumático ou, no meu caso, só uma forma de dor como release de endorfina instantânea no corpo.
Step 1:
We started with two ring lines and a texture around the ankle, covering one of the most visible scars that used to bother J a lot. (A few years earlier, I also did many symmetric rings around J’s arm, so J wanted those to match that).
Step 2:
Then J came for a second session where we did all the freehand base of the line work and the full blacks. The idea here was to cover the bigger scars with full black and to create the main shape for all the details to come. (I obviously forgot to photograph this step 🤡 ). In this session we had a lot of exchange about the design that J wanted that initially needed to resemble zebra stripes.
Step 3:
The final step was to add all the shades and textures to cover up the smaller scars. J asked me to try to not do a tattoo that looked “too heavy” as it is on the other leg, that is also a scars coverup not done by me. They wanted to keep the abstract style, but a bit lighter. However difficult this request can be with the amount of scars, I think we did a pretty good job of keeping the choice of finer lines and light shading where it was possible. :-)
Conclusion:
Usually when people come to me with full scars coverups, one of the reasons is that they want to avoid the looks from other people. J told me about people randomly asking them about what those scars were and how did they get them. So here is a final note: please DON’T ASK about people’s scars. If they want to share, they will. If not, please just ignore it. It s not yours to comment on. This might sound harsh, but it’s just that I get so many reports of my customers feeling super bad when people keep looking at their scars and commenting on them. I wish we would live in a world where everyone just minds their own bodies.
Anyway, I feel super grateful that J trusted me so much to create this piece with them. We were both super happy with the result and I can’t wait to see it fully healed in person.