blackout · 2 years, 3 months
Daniel's Diary
Near-total blackout with sacred geometry negative space
I had seventeen tattoos before this. None of them talked to each other. A rose here, a skull there, a quote I outgrew by twenty-five. The blackout wasn't about covering mistakes — it was about choosing silence so that what remains could actually be heard. This is my diary of erasing everything and starting from intention.
The decision to go black
I've been thinking about this for two years. Every day I look at my scattered tattoos and feel... noise. Visual noise. No coherence, no conversation between the pieces. Just seventeen separate decisions made by seventeen different versions of me. I saw Katya's blackout work on Instagram — full bodies of solid black with these impossibly thin channels of bare skin forming sacred geometry. It hit me physically. That's what I want. Not more images. Less. Almost nothing. Just geometry emerging from void.
Mood: Clarity after years of uncertainty.
Planning with Katya
Three consultations. Katya drew the negative space system on my body with white paint — a network of thin lines forming interconnected sacred geometry. Flower of Life across the torso, Metatron's Cube on the back, Seed of Life at each major joint. When the paint dried and I looked in the mirror, I could already see it. The lines will be bare skin. Everything else will be solid black. She photographed every angle, measured my proportions, calculated how the geometry needs to distort to remain visually correct on curved surfaces. She said most people don't understand that a straight line on paper becomes a curve on a body.
Mood: Trust. Handing my body to someone else's vision.
Sessions 1–3 — left leg fill
The sound of a machine packing solid black is nothing like outline work. It's deeper, slower. Katya uses a mag shader — wide needles, maximum saturation per pass. The sensation is... relentless. Not a sharp sting but a grinding heat. Three sessions on my left leg. Six hours each. By the end my leg is swollen twice its normal size, completely black from ankle to hip with these thin rivers of bare skin running through it in geometric patterns. The contrast is violent. I love it.
Pain: 6/10 — consistent grinding pressure. No spikes but no relief either.
Healing: Significant swelling for 5 days. Black ink weeping onto sheets. Using Saniderm wraps.
Mood: Committed. There's no going back from solid black.
Sessions 7–10 — both legs complete
Both legs done. Sixteen sessions total. Standing in the shower watching water run off legs that are completely black except for thin sacred geometry channels... it's alien. It doesn't look like my body anymore. It looks like something else entirely. The old tattoos are gone. The rose on my calf — gone. The compass on my shin — gone. Absorbed into void. And I feel nothing about losing them. They weren't mine anymore. This is mine.
Healing: Legs fully healed. The black has settled to a deep, even matte. No patches.
Mood: Detachment from the old self. Becoming.
Sessions 13–18 — the back
The back is where the centrepiece lives — Metatron's Cube, massive, spanning shoulder to shoulder. Katya masks the geometry channels with custom-cut vinyl stencils, then fills everything around them solid black. The precision is extraordinary. Lines less than 2mm wide preserved perfectly against fields of total saturation. Six sessions. The worst was over the spine — you can feel the needle on bone. I dissociated for parts of it. Put headphones in, played drone music, and went somewhere else. When I came back my entire back was black with this luminous geometric web preserved in bare skin. Sacred geometry doesn't look sacred on paper. On a body, against black, it looks like something ancient and true.
Pain: 8/10 — spine and scapulae. Deep bone-resonance pain.
Healing: Back takes longest to heal. Sleeping face-down for weeks. Silk sheets to reduce friction.
Mood: Transcendent during sessions. Exhausted after.
Sessions 22–30 — arms
Arms are faster than legs — less surface area, more accessible. But the inner arms are hellish. Elbow ditches, inner bicep, wrists. Katya does them in long sessions — she says it's better to get an arm done in 4 sessions than to drag it over 8. I agree. Rip the plaster off. The geometry channels on my arms connect to the back and torso systems. At each junction point there's a Seed of Life — a small circular pattern that acts as a node in the larger network. Left arm took 4 sessions. Right arm took 5 because one session had to be cut short when I started shaking involuntarily. Body just said no. Katya stopped immediately. No judgement. We picked it up two weeks later.
Pain: 9/10 — inner arm, especially near wrist and elbow ditch.
Healing: Arms heal fast but the swelling makes daily life difficult. Can't grip properly for days.
Mood: Humbled by session where my body rejected continuing.
Sessions 34–42 — torso
Chest, stomach, sides. The torso connects everything. I can see the full system now — geometry flowing unbroken from legs through torso through arms, a single network across my entire body. The chest was emotional. Watching my heart area turn black, feeling the needle over my sternum. The Flower of Life pattern over my solar plexus is the piece I'm most proud of — it looks like it's glowing against the black. The ribs were predictably terrible. Katya works fast through them. Doesn't linger. "Efficiency is mercy," she says.
Pain: 8/10 — ribs and sternum. Chest less painful than expected.
Healing: Torso heals unevenly. Needed one touch-up session for a patch on the right side.
Mood: The end is visible now. I can see the finished body when I close my eyes.
Sessions 44–46 — saturation passes
Going over everything a second time for true-black density. Some areas where the skin didn't hold ink perfectly on first pass — knees, elbows, lower back. Katya calls these "stubborn zones." The touch-up sessions are shorter — 3 hours max — but somehow more painful because you're working over healed tattoo. The ink sits deeper now. Under artificial light there's no patchiness, no grey areas. Pure matte black.
Healing: Minimal compared to first pass. Body knows what to expect now.
Mood: Perfectionist satisfaction. Getting the last 2% right.
Session 48 — final touch-up. Done.
Last session. One hour. A few spots on my right shoulder blade where a line needed cleaning. Katya finished, stood back, and said "That's it." Two years and three months. Forty-eight sessions. My body is now approximately 95% solid black, with a continuous network of sacred geometry channels running from my ankles to my collarbones in bare skin. In the dark, you see nothing. Under light, the geometry appears — Flower of Life, Metatron's Cube, Seed of Life nodes. Light on darkness. Order within void. I went home, stood in front of my full-length mirror for twenty minutes, and felt completely still for the first time in years.
Mood: Stillness. Finally, stillness.
“People ask if it hurt. Everything meaningful hurts. The question is whether you come out the other side transformed.”
Looking back
Someone at a club asked me why I "destroyed" my body. I told them I didn't destroy anything — I composted it. Everything that was there before is still there, beneath the black. It's just not the story anymore. The geometry is the story now. And the story is: I chose what to keep. I chose what matters. Everything else can be void. That's not destruction. That's editing. The most powerful form of creation is knowing what to remove.
Summary
Total sessions
48
Total hours in chair
~240
Duration
2 years 3 months
Coverage
~95% solid black
Technique
Machine (mag shader)
Negative space
Sacred geometry channels
Previous tattoos covered
17
Most painful area
Inner arms — 9/10
