Chp 684. Tattoo makeover makeover

Recently I got a tattoo makeover of my previous tattoo makeover :D

There's this really talented Mizo tattoo artist called Zuia here in Pune. He has his own Tattoo parlour. When Sanga heard that I wanted to retouch my previous tattoo makeover, he took me to his house. Zuia took photos of my tats and brainstormed on the best way to cover it up.

After a week or two, he told me that he was ready with his design. That day, some of my friends too went with me to his tattoo parlour as they wanted to see the whole process of someone getting inked.

Sanga drove us to the place with his car. Sanga by the way has an indirect connection to one of my infamous tattoos that only a few of our close friends know about. :D

The journey was a bit long as the shop was located at the suburban area of Pimple Saudagar. It was also my first time at this locality.

Finally, we reached Ink Land Tattoo. It is situated near the busy Kokane Chowk (the correct pronunciation is Ko-ka-ne, though it's sounds so cool to call it ko-kain :P )

The shop was awesome, with all the proper equipment and tattoo seats in place.

You can follow Ink Land Tattoo Facebook page here as well. Zuia has kept a large collection of his past work there.

The moment we met him, Zuia got to work immediately, as he had a long list of appointments after me. He showed me the final image of the Samurai warrior that we both agreed upon.

He measured the required size and then printed the image out on a printer. He then traced that exact image on a special paper. That paper is something like those carbon papers we used to use before the age of internet.

Once done, he shaved the tattoo area of my arm with a disposable blade and then pasted that special paper and slowly peeled it off. The imprint of the image outline remained on my arm.

He applied a lot of disinfectant as well. While me and the guys were completely captivated with what Zuia was doing, what were the ladies up to?

Oh.

:D

By the way, Zuia admitted that most tattoo artists don't like to do makeover work because it is a big challenge for them, and since it doesn't turn out as good as new tattoos are supposed to, the artist ends up getting a bad rep for that.

But in my case, he was willing to work on it because of our Mizo-Mizo connection, even though this wasn't just a tattoo makeover but a tattoo makeover makeover! :)

To know more about my previous tattoo makeover, you can read my old blog post here - Chp 499. Tattoo Makeover.

To cut a long story short, I initially had this shitty tattoo…

Finally saw a Tattoo worse than mine. Thats @Mizohican's tiger that was trying to turn http://twitpic.com/3643h1

— Sidharth Rao (@sidharthrao) November 12, 2010

The tattoo artist back then worked his magic on the above abomination of a tattoo, and managed to transform it into this -

For details of the process or the background story on my first shitty tattoo, do visit the link given above :)

And so I was a happy man. The makeover design covered up the old design nicely. But not for long. Within a couple of weeks, the new tattoo faded, and most of the Maori design and shadings completely disappeared!

It could be because of a combination of reasons - either the ink used was of inferior quality, or the artist didn't pierce deep enough, or I wasn't taking care of the post-tats treatment well enough.

Whatever be it, the so called "tiger" resurfaced and reared its ugly head again.

Now you can see why most tattoo artists hesitate to take up jobs like this.

But that did not deter Zuia and he got to work immediately.

Zuia also advised me that I should get this tattoo in different batches, waiting for each batch to heal first before the next sitting.

And so on the first sitting, Zuia did the entire outlines and important thick lines.

After that we all headed back to Pune Aundh.

It took two weeks for the outline to completely heal. I was taking good care of it, making sure the area was well lubricated with Vaseline or baby oil the entire time.

On the second sitting, Sanga went with me again. The others had seen enough I guess (and yes, it would be quite boring for those not interested in tattoos).

For the shading, Zuia used four different shades of black.

He also used two different types of needles - one was used to re-outline a few sections (single precision needle) and the other one used for shading had 12 freaking needles in it!

Good right? A very beautiful masterpiece indeed. No traces of that God-forsaken tiger, lolz.

But Zuia wasn't done yet!

After this, we again sat down for around an hour where he used only white ink. It was to polish the tattoo and give it a glossy-like finishing.

Check out the end result! :)

Really awesome.

On my third sitting, I didn't want to bother my friends again and went to his tattoo parlour alone. This time we decided to do both the outline and shading in one sitting as the remaining image wasn't that big.

The Dojo that he drew for the background looked really cool.

We quickly started off after that. Once he had done the outline, we took a break and had lunch. After lunch we continued again. There was an appointment at 3 PM so I gave way to the beautiful lady who came to get a feather tattoo done on her forearm.

Once she left, Zuia resumed work, and finally completed the Dojo.

We also put up a few other designs and shadings below the Dojo and till today, his work is clearly visible on my arm. I’m planning to get a few more designs and maybe even cover up my first tattoo which is the Chinese character (which means "East", and not "Schezwan Chicken noodles" contrary to popular belief :P )

So I'll update you all once I do that.

Do "like" Ink Land Tattoo on Facebook, and if you want to contact Zuia, his number is +91 7721084552. He'll even give you a discount if you tell him you heard about him from my blog post :)

Until then, cheers, and always try to live your life like a permanent tattoo. With no ragrets regrets. Ponder on that for a few minutes and you'll see how deep that sinks in. Ciao.