Tattoos have a long and storied history that date back thousands of years. They have been applied for decoration, symbolism, rites of passage, religious devotion, status, fertility, talismans, protection, punishment and healing. Yes, healing.

Europe’s oldest known naturally mummified human discovery, nicknamed Ötzi after the mountain region on the border of Italy and Austria where he was discovered, had 61 tattoos. The greatest concentration of which were on his legs. Most remarkable, is speculation that many of the tattoos on the man, who lived between 3350 and 3105 B.C., were done atop areas where his bones showed age-related strain and degeneration – especially in the knee and ankle joints. His tattoos also coincided with acupuncture points used today to relieve pain, as well as over the top of arthritic joints. Similar therapeutic tattoos were later discovered on Egyptian mummies of the same time period.

But whatever the reason humans throughout time have sought tattoos – there were most assuredly those who endeavored to have said tattoos removed or covered with an overlaying tattoo. And because removing tattoos can be an expensive and painful experience, it is no surprise that many opt to have them covered by a follow-up tattoo.

Durango’s Heathen Tattoo owner and artist Derek Martinez has done his fair share of cover-ups during his 21 years of tattooing. He didn’t set out to be a tattoo artist. He was focused on painting and drawing “and a little bit of everything” when tattooing came into his life.

“It was kind of something that was just thrown into my lap,” said the 41-year-old. “I had a really good friend who was a tattoo artist. And he had seen my art for years and asked me, ‘Why don’t you tattoo?’ And I told him, ‘Well, I don’t know how to tattoo,’ and he was like well, ‘I’ll show you.’ And that’s how it started.”

DM: Yes, lettering. Nine times out of 10 they went too small. And as the tattoo ages and the ink migrates it becomes illegible.

Lettering. (laughs) Because it's so structured and our eye is so keen at seeing it. So if it's a bad tattoo, and there's possible scarring and it raises, the eye can see underneath the cover-up very well.

With design. You try to break it up as much as you can with design. You try to work the new lines of the cover-up, you try to pass over as many of the existing lines as possible to break up the shape.

Yeah, sometimes they'll turn that dark, money-green or even like a bluish tint, and to be honest that's kind of the older inks. The inks that they have nowadays, that's really not an issue. They stay pretty true to the black side. But that's because the base of black, most of the time, is from a blue base. So with color theory, most people know there's only three true colors. And all the other colors are derived from those three colors. And so black is derived most of the time from a blue base. So that's why it turns more toward the blue or the green.

It's definitely far easier to make a living tattooing than it is with painting or graphics or anything like that. As a tattoo artists, we make a pretty good living being able to do what we love to do.

Yes, scarred skin. Some people have, you know, skin grafts from burns or what have you. And a lot of times they want to turn that scar into something pretty. And so if you don't have prior knowledge of how to tattoo that, it can be a mess. It's probably the most difficult skin to tattoo. Because anytime you create a wound on the human body, there's scarring, whether it's microscopic or it's big visible scarring. And so even with tattooing, there's a level of scarring. We try to minimize it, make it microscopic, so it doesn't show through the tattoo as far as raising or a white scar. And when you create another wound already on top of a wound sometimes that can exasperate the scarring.

Oh, absolutely. All the time.

Most of my refusals are (because) the client wants to tattoo too small. And they're not budging with the size that they want. And I won't tattoo it because I know what it's going to look like in 10 years. Most people getting tattoos, they haven't seen enough tattoos long enough to know how they age and especially with social media nowadays, people think you can go microscopic with some tattoos, and it's just not doable.

Yes. There's all kinds of different reasons. Most of the time, it's not from the pain. A lot of people discount the fact that we are creating a wound, and you never know what the human body's going through. Nine times out of 10 it's because they didn't eat pre-tattoo. But sometimes it's an underlying stress or medical condition.

Yeah, I like to do dark realism. I just like the way that it looks. I like doing evil stuff. So it’s just kind of what I gravitate to. I don't get to do a ton of that in Durango. Unfortunately. But when I do get the chance I jump at it.

Well, it's very rare that we actually run into a misspelled tattoo. That doesn't happen often. But as far as covering up tattoos, there's two artists in my shop that cover up tattoos, and I would say him or I are doing a cover-up at least once a week.

The latest cover-up I did was a seahorse body with a wolf head. And I put that over some existing lettering.

I do every part of skin except for genitals. So, no part of the skin is crazy to me. It's all canvas, if that makes sense.

Most people get their tattoos done in one sitting just because most people nowadays get smaller tattoos. I would say the average tattoo in my shop lasts around two hours.

The shop hourly rate is $150, so a two-hour tattoo will run you $300.

gjaros@durangoherald.com