Stretch marks

Yesterday i tattooed a friend of mine, and wile we were talking i he asked me what i think it would be nice to do on the lower half of his back, because he has some big stretch marks in that area, personally i never tattooed stretch marks so i wasn't sure, i am thinking that maybe something like a tribal or similar would be better, because like he said, he has a tendency to keep gaining and losing weight, so i believe he can have new stretch marks later, and a tattoo like that would be easier to retouch if necessary than some more detailed work, that would probably look nasty with new marks.

Who tattooed stretch marks before or has some knowledge/ideas about this? All opinions are welcome.

I've done it and in my experience it was somewhat like tattooing over a scar, but somewhat less of a worry. I wouldn't worry too much about tattooing over them as long as you're careful and really light handed getting through them. You still have to get the ink in so as you know if you go to light it won't take. My recommendation would be tell them to hold off until they're at a weight they want to be at and stay at and make sure the marks are old. I wouldn't tattoo over a scarred area until the scars where at least a year old, that way they've had time to completely heal and pretty much set in to the way they are going to be for good.

If this person still thinks they're going to continue to fluctuate in weight and possibly get more stretch marks, honestly, I'd recommend not getting tattooed in that area. I don't have much experience with stretch marks, but have done a considerable amount of tattooing over scars which is why I use the same guidelines in my tattooing for possibly going over stretch marks. Maybe someone with more experience tattooing over stretch marks will chime in and have some better advice. I hope someone does as I'd like to know some other views on this one. Interesting question thanks for putting it out there.

Can't say that I have a lot experience tattoo over them, but this last tattoo I did had some and they swelled quickly. So I would definatley take Wrathone's advice. However a lower back tribal tattoo on a man is probably not the best idea unless the rest of his back is tribal also. Some may consider it a tramp stamp. Lol.

Here in Portugal we don't really have that kind of idea about lower back tattoos as tramp stamps, besides it wouldn't be that small, it would need to be his entire lower back (middle down), the stretch marks are that big.

If he's dead set on getting something there even though he may still go up and down in weight and get more stretch marks then obviously he's going to get it. I would advise him on the facts that there's no telling what it's going to do if he changes sizes and gets more stretch marks. The concern I would have with doing tribal in this situation is that, although tribal seems like it's the answer and seems like it would be easy to go in a fix if he got more stretch marks in reality it probably would be the most difficult to fix. Tribal has clean sharp very defined lines and edges, stretch marks are unpredictable and those clean edges and lines could and probably would distorted beyond a fixable point. Stretch marks expand and move in every direction and could completely blow an entire area of the tribal out and make it impossible to redefine the area into a clean lined and edged tribal and the stretch mark will change the appearance of the ink.

If you're going to do this tattoo I would suggest trying to come up with a design or scene that is not very detailed and more muted and understated. I don't know if I'm explaining that right, but let's say you did a beach scene like tattoo back there. It would be colors and shading to make the definitions of the tattoo as opposed to using lines and a lot of line work. If he were to get more stretch marks going in and putting in some more color and shading for touch up would be much easier to do than trying to define hard sharp edges that have been distorted possibly to the point of changing the entire shape of the object.

I hope that made sense and helps you out some.

Good Luck

WEll, after checking several opinions in here and other sites, i'm not going to do it to be honest, i'll just explain him everithing and advice him to go to a studio i know, and get another opinion there, maybe they come up with a good idea for him, but personally i wont be doing it.

Thanks for all opinions.