What To Do if You Notice an Uneven or Crooked Line on Your Tattoo

As soon as you notice any uneven or crooked lines on your tattoo, you should let your tattoo artist know. This could be during the tattoo being completed or it could be after it’s healed. 

If you notice something during the healing process, you should wait as your skin and tattoo won’t look their best at this point.

There are occasions where a crooked line can be fixed. This will depend on the design of the tattoo. If you notice it during the procedure, your tattoo artist could add to the design or add some fading to blur the crooked lines. 

There are also times where the lines can’t be fixed. In this case, it could require a cover up or laser removal to fix the issue. 

Can Tattoo Artists Fix Uneven and Crooked Lines?

If a line of your tattoo is crooked when it’s being completed, it will be crooked when it heals. The line won’t change by itself. This is why it’s important to let your tattoo artist know as soon as you notice any issues. The uneven line could be caused by tattoo blowout, where the ink spreads beyond the lines.

Some lines in tattoos can be thickened to straighten them out, or they can be blurred and hidden by adding shading. If this won’t work, it could be that they can be changed by adding more details to the tattoo. This won’t work with text or numbers, so you should be extra careful with these styles of tattoo.

If a crooked line can’t be corrected or if it affects the whole shape and look of the tattoo, you may have to have a cover-up tattoo. This will be completely different from your original design but at least you will have a good-looking tattoo in the end.

The Tattoo Artist

When looking for a tattoo artist, you should make sure that you choose the best one possible. You shouldn’t pick them because they’re the cheapest, you get what you pay for and you want the best as you’ll have the tattoo forever.

Make sure you check out their portfolio of work and pay attention to any line work that they have done previously. Also, ask around to see if you know anyone who has had a tattoo completed by them.

How You Can Help

A tattoo is a manual process and human error does happen so you need to be mindful of this. There are also things that you can do to aid the tattoo artist to have straight lines.

Make sure that you take the time to consider the tattoo that you want. If you have lots of thin delicate lines within text or numbers, these could look different once the ink is used on your skin. 

You should check the stencil properly on your skin before they start using ink. As your body is not a level surface some of the lines may look uneven.

Keep quiet and don’t stress your tattoo artist. By disturbing them or rushing them, they may create errors in their work. If you are having a large tattoo, make sure that you schedule this over a number of sessions. It can be tiring for both you and the artist which is not good.

The most important thing is to keep still when the tattoo artist is inking you. If you are going to move, let them know and avoid making any sudden movements. 

Conclusion

There are ways that crooked or uneven lines of a tattoo can be corrected or covered up. However, the best thing to do is to do what you can to avoid this happening in the first instance.

If you communicate to your tattoo artist beforehand and check the design at every stage you can reduce the chance of mistakes happening.

We hope that we’ve answered your question about crooked lines being corrected and you now feel more comfortable about having your tattoo.