‘My mum was not keen on the tattoo at all’ Sinead Swift says, reflecting on her new ink. ‘She doesn’t like the bold nature of it. She was shocked I’d done it in the first place.’
The 25-year-old bartender and tattoo artists proudly sports a ‘blackout tattoo’, a new tattooing trend which sees a large section of the body, such as the arms or legs, inked with solid and opaque black ink.
‘I do get different opinions on it some people wonder why I’ve just gone straight for a solid black section of my body,’ Sinead adds.
Musician Machine Gun Kelly shocked fans in February after revealing his new look. The rapper, who already had his torso inked, has completely covered portions of his arms and chest with black ink – with the exception of a big cross and symmetrical lines to break up the solid black look – which covered up many of his older markings.
Last October, tattoo artist and television personality Kat Von D revealed she had spent 40 hours blacking out the tattoos she no longer wants.
Tattoo artist Mike Philp has his own studio in Essex and has seen a rise in people seeking blackouts. He tells Metro.co.uk that the tattoo trend was originally just a way to cover up a large amount of old work but has since evolved into its own aesthetic.
‘Blackout exists because laser treatment wasn’t as good and you can’t really laser off coloured tattoos and the process to try and remove them would have been almost impossible,’ Mike explains.
‘Just like any form of art, sometimes there’s a reason and a purpose that then develops into an artistic design, and that’s kind of what’s happened with this trend of blackout.’
For, Sinead the decision was both an aesthetic one and a way to render old tattoos a distant memory. She got her first one when she was 18, it was a small design on her sternum. Since then she has added up to 60 to her body, mostly since the age of 21.
While her favourite designs are the ones she got on her ears, because it’s unusual to get tattoos there, some of the ones on her arms fell out of favour. ‘I had a couple of small linework pieces that I got when I was an apprentice. Nothing terrible, just nothing I really wanted.’
She started blacking out her tattoos in November last year and the process was completed in January after two sessions. ‘Some people get their blackout done in one session but I heard it was a painful process,’ she says.
‘Underneath my blackout tattoo, I had some that I had got early on in my career and they weren’t necessarily bad – they were just more tattoos that I just didn’t really resonate with anymore.’
Before getting her arm blacked out she considered getting them lasered and cover ups, but she likes the blackout aesthetic. ‘I love the look of blackout tattoos when they’re done to a high level and celebrities are starting to get blackout tattoos in a bold way. I loved the aesthetic of clean, solid black.’
Sinead was anxious about how much the blackout process would hurt. ‘As much as I love tattoos and even being a tattoo artist, I’m not great with pain. I was a bit anxious about it. Having a blackout was quite a serious healing process from what I’d heard and I heard it was more painful getting it done than a regular tattoo.
‘From my personal experience the actual pain of it was what you would expect getting a tattoo, but it was more the healing process that’s the more painful part because you’re effectively taking off one full layer of skin.
‘And obviously tattoos do scab, so when it did scab and got to that part of the process, it was quite difficult to clean and heal consistently.
‘Everyone goes on about the healing process slightly differently with a blackout tattoo. It’s a big open wound.’
She kept her arm covered with clingfilm as you would with any other tattoo for the first week after the first session and cleaned it at least 2-3 days each day.
There was some bleeding after getting the blackout work done. ‘When you’re healing quite a saturated tattoo with a lot of pigment, either colour or really solid black, it sweats out a lot of excess ink, plasma and blood in the first 24-48 hours, which is why we recommended covering it up with clingfilm,’ she says.
‘With a solid black tattoo I did get quite a lot of that. After the first session I had to keep my arm fully wrapped up because I was getting a lot of excess ink and plasma coming out of my arm because it’s basically an open wound but I didn’t bleed any more than I would with a normal tattoo.
‘It was quite a gruelling healing process,’ she recalls. ‘I did consider lasers. There are a couple of options, you can either get laser removal and get something over the top, or some people also go for a thing called blast overs, which is now a popular trend.’
A blast over is when a fresh tattoo is put over the top of the old one, but the one underneath is still partly visible and it’s not a full cover up. ‘I just didn’t like the messiness of that, I wanted a fresh, clean, nice, solid black aesthetic.
It took between two and three-and-a-half weeks after the sessions, for her arm to completely heal. ‘Although they may seem straightforward, blackout tattoos are actually quite a difficult thing to achieve. It’s hard to get very clean, consistent, solid black.’
Mike says that blackout may not be the best way for everyone wanting to hide old tattoos and they won’t suit everyone. ‘It’s an option but I don’t know if it’s the best option, but I think it’s a creative way when someone’s got so much ink on them already, especially colour work.
‘Black and grey and be lasered off really easily, you can almost start all over again. But anything heavy, bold and with colour, I think blackout is a good option.’
Mike, who has done blackouts on clients with lots of colour tattoos, praises tattoo artist Roxx, who did Machine Gun Kelly’s blackout work, for doing the trend in a creative way. ‘You can see that she’s trying to refine the shape and direction of his body.’
So, does Sinead think she made the right choice? ‘It’s a huge commitment, especially coming from my perspective as a tattoo artist. I don’t think it should necessarily be everyone’s first option to just cover something up because I think some people go, ‘Oh I don’t like that anymore, let’s just put black over it.’
But Sinead doesn’t have any regrets, even if some of the reactions to her tattoo haven’t always been the best. ‘I definitely think there’s beauty in blackout designs.
‘Machine Gun Kelly has different elements to his piece, it’s not just a black blob, I definitely love that direction – people using solid black in an aesthetic black.
‘But once you’ve gone for solid black, it is then very difficult to remove. I definitely think people should also consider laser or cover ups as well.
‘For me, I know personally that I did consider all the options so that this one was the best one for me. It’s quite out there I guess but generally people find it quite fascinating that I’ve got a whole solid black section of my arm. It’s another level of tattooing. It took some getting used to but I love it.’
Do you have a story to share?
Get in touch by emailing [email protected].
MORE : Joe Exotic hits on Machine Gun Kelly from prison with bizarre flirty message
Sign up to our guide to what’s on in London, trusted reviews, brilliant offers and competitions. London’s best bits in your inbox
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.