for me there is a point where they cross the line from hot to just plain overkill, and that's when you start to see more ink than skin. I think of tats as accent pieces.
what she said. exactly.
No matter what age you are, the skin cells will divide and renew, though, yes? I know that eventually, all my tats will lose definition and become blurry - when they do, I'll just have them touched up.
Not really, as you age your skin changes because fewer and fewer cells are actually dividing. Beyond your 50s pretty much only the stem cells are still going- and they do not affect tats as much. Beyond your 70s even the stems cells are pretty much done.
But in your 20s- the cells are dividing nearly as often as they did in your teens. A 40 year old- getting a tat- will see less change over the subsequent 10 years than will a 20 year old.
And, no, you can not just get all tats touched up- blur is a permanent un-focusing of a line or detail, resulting in a wider, fuzzier line. You can make a wider fuzzy line into a wider sharp edged line by adding ink over the fuzzy area... but you can not regain the fine edged original line the blur will remain.
For bolder designs, this is not much of an issue... but those folks who get, like, portraits, of people on them? Those will get steadily worse looking over time and no touch up will fix it.
The more iconic and logo-like the design, the happier you will be long term.
The more abstract the design the happier you will be.
A blurry looking butterfly or fish appears flawed.
A blurry abstract design can look like it was meant to be that way.
Simple, stark, and spare is the way to go.
And BTW- black looks un-natural... better yet is a dark dark dark brown.
A dog's nose may look black- but it is brown. And if it were black- it would startle you how wrong it would look.
Also- entertain the idea of going VERY subtle- most folks getting tats look like their skin is yelling at you.
Consider picking a color for your tats that is almost imperceptible against your skin, or just a very few tones different.
For something like cherry blossoms, this would be easy... the trick would be to treat your natural skin tone as "white" and use NO color lighter than that... and AVOID having any kind of dark outlining of the petals or branches..
Look at the first 3 attachments... subtle can be very effective.
Or- as in one of them, if you have a naturally pinkish skin tone- use your skin tone for the main color in the blossoms themselves, and simply outline their shape with a contrasting color...
Especially avoid the strong colors and small blossom...
the last attachment shows how a cherry blossom tattoo can end up looking like a skin disease...
And it also illustrates how the dark branches really suck...