Tattoo artists embrace challenge of improving regretful ink jobs

YORK, Pa. — Dorie Heyer’s first tattoo was “an eyesore” for many years.

Fulfilling a pact made with a close friend, the York Township woman got the tattoo on her 17th birthday. The tattoo artist insisted on doing the entire piece in single needle, which prevented it from healing properly. Heyer’s skin rejected a lot of the ink.

“This caused it to look very patchy,” she said. “Also, the line work was shaky at best.”

Finally, after several years living with the bad artwork, Heyer and her friend decided to have their tattoos fixed. They celebrated their birthdays with each agreeing to pay for the other’s cover-up work, which Heyer said cost about $100.

Today, Heyer sports a pair of hearts where the artwork once was.

“It wasn’t any more costly to get it fixed than it was to get the original,” she said.

Fixing bad tattoos, known as “cover-up work” in the industry, has skyrocketed in recent years. Reality TV shows like “LA Ink” and “America’s Worst Tattoos” are largely responsible, said Brian Stence, owner of No Regrets tattoo parlor in York.

“We do a lot of coverup work,” he said. “When I started tattooing, that was part of the fun — trying to cover up some of these nightmares.”

Making a new tattoo out of somebody’s mistake can limit the options, said artist Christi Clark, adding that she has developed her own strategy for fixing bad ink.

“Every cover-up is individual,” said Clark, who works at No Regrets. “I use movement and color. I’ll look at how your eye moves through the piece, and you won’t even notice what is underneath unless you look for it.”

Often, it isn’t necessarily a bad tattoo that a customer wants reworked.

“A lot of times it’s an old boyfriend’s name or a tattoo they got when they were drunk,” Clark said. “I’ve covered up a lot of names.”