How tattoos age. lol

So, long story short, I wanted a tattoo, and there are so many beautiful, intricate designs online, but the more research I did, the more I realized those designs probably won't look good in just a few years. Skin is alive, and tatoos will blur and fade over time. I also learned that brighter colors fade faster. But exactly how small is too small a line, and exactly how bright a color is too bright? There wasn't much to go on online. Nobody is posting their beautiful tattoo after 10 years of fading and blurring. That's why I designed and got this tattoo - to see how it will fade and blur over time.

When designing it, I called around to a few shops, asking what the smallest possible line they can draw is. Long story short, the answer is about 0.35mm, or 350μm (micrometers.) I used that for the smallest lines in my tattoo design, and scaled up from there. Many artists warned me that lines this small will fade quickly. "I know," I said. "That's the point." They were confused.

I used the Mars Curiosity calibration target as inspiration for this tattoo. Strictly speaking, I didn't need both horizontal AND vertical lines - that's more of a digital camera thing - but I liked the look of it. As a video editor, I've spent a lot of time looking at SMPTE NTSC color bars, and already knew that when viewed in black and white, there is a clear gradient to them - lightest on the left, darkest on the right. Every color has its own inherent luminosity.

I've heard that white tattoo ink fades the fastest, and yellow is the second fastest. This is unfortunate for dark-skinned individuals who would otherwise have far more choices with their tattoos, if white ink could be used as a base. Perhaps ink technology will improve, or maybe it's an insurmountable physics problem. I don't know. I have heard that UV light degrades tattoos "quickly," and SPF 100 is recommended for all tattoos. I also suspect that hardly anyone does this. So I chose my ankle for this tattoo, knowing I could almost always cover it with my sock.

I got the tattoo tattoooededed on my skin on 2021-09-18. The artist had Sept 11 available, but I wanted to wait another week, because that's just bad juju.

After 3 years, the tattoo is more blurred than I would have expected, but this is only obvious when vewied close-up. The light gray rectangle is also not looking very good, which I expected. Though because it's patchy now, I suspect a lot of this is due to inconsistent amounts of ink during the initial application. Though you can't really see that in the first photos, so perhaps this is the kind of thing that only an experienced artist would know about. I guess. It's white ink mixed with a tiny bit of black, I believe. Definitely a color I would never have chosen, and never will choose again. I really should have made careful note of exactly which inks were used. I am annoyed that my artist asked me what inks he had used, when I went back for the schedules touch-ups. If that info was important, why didn't he tell me? Well, now I know for next time.

This tattoo will recieve no more touch-ups, ever. Its purpose is to fade. I'll post another image of it every year! (When I remember.) I should have included a white piece of paper in each shot to make white balance much easier. There are many things I'd do differently if I were to do this again! (If you want to do a test like this, but want to do a better job, send me an email, and I'll give you more details.)