I noticed a woman with a tatoo on her back (about where the shoulderblade is), but I could not make it out as any kind of clear image. It looked like it must have been something once, but now looked like a blob. So, I was wondering, do tatoos age? I mean, can they change drastically from what they once started as? (Or, heck, maybe the lady likes a blob-like tatoo, right?)
Sure they can. Especially if you don’t take care of it. A lot of exposure to sunlight can make it fade or blur (that’s probably what happened to this woman, by the way). Using subpar ink to start with can make it run together. Bad technique - going too deep, for instance - or not taking care of it while it heals can also lead to problems.
It doesn’t happen to all tattoos - the one on my belly, for instance, is as bright and clear now as it was when I got it 10 years ago and will likely stay looking pretty good for a long time. But they do require a little upkeep and preplanning to stay attractive.
Maybe this is a phenomenon that is seem less frequently now, but when I was a kid n the 1970s, it was common to see crusty WWI and WWII vets with completely undefined blue blobs on their arms that may have once been anchors, seals of their branch of service, “Mom”, and the like. Since tattoos were’t really a popular culture phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s, except among a very rough crowd, there was little else to compare those blue blobs with.
Yep, with better inks, better techniques, and a better understanding of aftercare, those used-to-be-a-bulldog blobs are getting rarer and rarer.
On the other hand, there’s been a tattooist set up in a booth at the local flea market recently, and I suspect anything you get at a dirt mall is going to be warped and blobby within a year or two. But that could just be the tattoo snob in me talking.
UV light (sunlight) will degrade the ink in a tattoo. The effect will be to blur and fade.
Skin stretches and loses elasticity as well as a normal part of aging. This will also blur and fade a tattoo.
…part of the reason I’m not big on tattoos. The skin is just too dynamic a template.