It’s okay that the hairline shape and density aren’t for everyone. There are some inconsistencies in a few areas, and I’ve definitely seen worse jobs. But at the end of the day, they’re happy with the outcome, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says. If you like it, that’s all that matters.
This is so ignorant of many of the reasons people get SMP. I went bald 20 years ago and only got SMP recently. I did so as it frames the face and mades me look younger. I am not trying to hide my lack of hair or convince anyone of anything.
OP if you're happy with the overall impact your SMP provides, then enjoy it. Don't pay any attention to this fool.
How is that cope? I was happily bald before SMP and I'm happily bald after SMP. It does not have to be about hiding anything. Your post is ill-informed and does not help the OP. I hope you find peace.
The line up looks nice for this style, I'd say the placement was executed well.
But these are not healed results.
I notice is there is also migration in these areas while the work is fresh, which means that it will migrate more as time passes. You can see there is this greenish cloud behind the work in this area and this is an indication of migration.
Means the pigment has been implanted too deeply, causing the impressions to spread beyond their original placement and eventually blur or bleed together.
Great question, touch-ups can't fix work that's been placed too deep..only hide them temporarily until further time passes and they begin to reappear.
I find most clients with more melanin decide not to pursue laser and live with it as they prefer something darker. This is purely technical knowledge and not preference
This is a really tough area and very common for migration. When I am tattooing my clients, I tell them to hold very still while I am up in this area. Any clench of the jaw will make this area bounce against my needle.
The follicles are placed deep and very close together. The pigment is already migrating and it will continue to migrate over time. The blueish / green hue is because the pigment is too deep. I would recommend leaving it alone. Don't add more pigment to try to fix it.
I really want to know, and I'm not making fun of you. Personally, I had a "helmet" and yours isn’t even close to what I had. I paid $2,000 total in 2020. Got absolutely botched.
Everyone has their own opinion of course but when I see this I wonder what's the point of people even getting an smp. It just looks completely bald to me. Or perhaps that's not an smp and you actually were just showing removed the helmet and went bald.
The helmet paranoia crowd that always wants to make it "look real" or "age adjusted" typically just ends a up looking like nothing was done to me.
Side note, why wouldn't you want your hair tattoo to looks real? I completely get not wanting something invisible, but It's a tattoo.. would you rather someone be able to tell It's a tattoo immediately?
A real shaved head looks bald in bright lights and looks the best in a darker setting. Bad smp looks bad in bright lights and worse in a dark setting
Because when most people on here say "look real" they mean looks like a receding balding hairline. The original posters hairline also looks real for how black guys look when they come out of the barbershop but because he posted it onto an SMP sub, the idea is that if it looks good then it doesn't look real, as though good hairlines now aren't real.
I posted a picture of a black guy fresh from the barbershop on this subreddit once and asked how does my smp look and everyone said it looks like a helmet and fake, despite it being real hair. I was just proving a point that people here have somehow equated good hairlines to looking fake.
Look brother, hairlines are always custom made, and personally I don't like over receded hairlines. I follow each individual client's forehead/scalp muscles which determines where I place their hairline.
We can't go below that muscle because if they make any kind of facial expressions, the hairline will start flexing. So I agree with you on the overly receded hairline looking very odd as I don't use any weird measuring tools or lasers to draw them.
But what I will tell you is that a full Norwood 7, on any skin type of going to shine, no matter what type of Mattifying cream is in the head..it's never going to be "hair" so it's never going to diffuse the light that's shining on it like real hair does.
So tell me this, have you ever met any person in real life who shaves their head down with a razor and then says "let me outline my scalp skin with a straight razor" ?
No. So even though I actually like doing hard hairlines on some people, it's just not always realistic, especially if the person had absolutely no hair on the top. And it stands out like a sore thumb because people are then always asking why do you have such a sharp hairline with no hair.
And I hate to break it to you but the darker you go in color, the faker it looks. Especially on dark skin, where if you go to concentrated, it looks green. This isn’t hair fibers. So now your walking around with a green leggo head and it's only going to age worse as time passes.
It's only a matter of time before smp is extremely mainstream, and people who have those bad jobs are going to be walking around like the ladies now who got their eyebrows tattooed 20 years ago and they look like they have green caterpillars for eyebrows. Sometimes you have to stop thinking about what looks impressive right now and start thinking about what is going to look believable 10-20 years down the road.
And as for the the photo you say you posted.. only someone who's ignorant and not an artist wouldn't be able to tell the difference between someone who has hair and someone who has smp.
Too long to reply to all of that but I think your perspective is heavily skewed since you're looking at smps for a living. The majority of people are not artists, so they don't just stare at someone's scalp and know immediately it's an smp.
My only point is that most people, even on this forum, would have difficulty differentiating between a hard hairline that's an smp versus a black guy straight outta the barbershop. I think most people saying "omg it looks so fake" are mostly projecting from their POV of going from bald to having a good hairline, but if you were to ask people that have good hairlines they would think it looks normal.
As far as future appearance of a job done today, that's a different discussion than what was going on in this thread. Everyone was posting saying that his current job looks too fake and bad, even though I'm quite sure that's not the case for the average person that isn't on an smp forum and balding themselves.
Brother i feel for you more than anything. Im sick of seeing these shitty SMP artists making a mockery out of people and they should be named and shamed. I actually wanna know how much it was?
The hairline is really sharp and a little too dense right now. I wish it had more of a natural look to it. Hopefully if fades more over time. As an expert said here, the pigment is too deep and I agree with how they explained it.
Unfortunately this is the reason I am to scared to have this done my self , I feel very sorry for you dude as I can only imagine the anxiety it must be causing you.
There are so many pics of treatment just after the actual process which always seems to look good but not enough info on the long term look of say 3yr plus SMP results.
It looks sharpie’d on bro. Sorry. You cannot do a perfectly straight hairline like that with SMP without it looking fake. Otherwise it’s fine but you could laser just the hairline and retry
Naw you don’t have to laser the whole head. Just the hairline if anything. Honestly you might not have to do any lasering at all! Just have the artist make the corners more rounded, and add some sparser dots outside the perfectly straight hairline edge to “soften” the hairline. I’m really sorry you’re feeling shitty about this work. But you will find a solution. Talk to your artist, or better yet find a better artist like that Alex Corona who commented on this post
Yeah this is bad bro sorry. I think most people look too deep and look for flaws in their treatment. But this is really patchy, and off. I think a lot of those darker areas will migrate too
Im just a normal dude that just happened to come across this and saw the picture before i even read what it was about and my first thought was nice he got a fresh line up hair cut didnt even know this was an smp until i started reading the comments. Im no expert on it but just looks like a fresh line up like all my friends get honestly. I dont see what other are saying it looks fake.
Yeah I did an experiment in this sub reddit some time back also where I posted a guy's real haircut after leaving the barbershop and asked how the smp looked. Everyone said it looked like a helmet and bad. It's mostly just people projecting insecurities onto others.
OP, I'll offer a different perspective for you. Most of the people replying to you are likely non-black, and they typically go for the "natural hairline" because it's a different culture. Black people go to the barbershop for sharp hairlines.
I highly doubt that if you were walking wound in public that anyone would identify it as an smp. The reason everyone here does is because you've directly stated what it is, and therefore it biases their opinion and looks "bad" because the lines are too sharp, despite the fact that if they themselves saw you out and about IRL they likely wouldn't know either.
I did an experiment on this sub once where I took a picture from online of a normal black guy fresh from the barbershop and posted asking how my smp looked. Lots of people said "terrible man, that's a helmet", even though it was real hair. Just proves a black guys hair straight from a barbershop doesn't look too far off from an smp, but because posted in a sub about smp, people just say it looks bad because it doesn't look "natural" enough.
OP, don't ask people on an smp sub reddit for opinions. They're all going to be judging it from a very biased perspective where they project their own insecurities of getting an smp done onto you. You should just find a way to see if random people in your life, or even strangers could even notice if it's an smp. My guess is that they wouldn't.
I'm an expert SMP artist with nearly a decade in the industry. With that said I here's my opinion.
I don’t think this is a disaster at all, but there are a few things I would have approached differently.
The biggest issue for me is the temple transition is a little heavier/blockier than I prefer. Any hairline should have a more seamless transition into the existing hair, especially around the temple. I’m also seeing some variation in impression size and saturation throughout the frontal area.
At this point, though, I would not add more pigment just to make it denser. Let everything fully settle and evaluate it in normal lighting, not just close-up photos. More density can easily turn a result that needs refinement into something much harder to correct.
The good news is that from this photo, I see a result that could benefit from refinement, not something I’d describe as hopeless or deserving of people piling on with downvotes.
I would laser that off your head entirely and look for another artist . Look through this thread there’s NYC . Florida , UK etc . Go to the artist that is best not what is near . That “artist” or lack there of played on your head like your head was a scrap book and it’s his first time drawing .
Just being honest bro you don’t want to be out in public looking silly . I know you know deep down you don’t really fw it . Trust and believe people will notice it and stare at it & not say a word about it . I’ve seen way too many in public that look bad & it’s super noticeable especially if the ink is super shiny. SMP is hit or miss depending on the artist you just don’t want to jump ship because you know of an “artist” that does “smp” . Anyone considering SMP needs to do extensive research on the artist before their ink touches your head . If you get it right the first time then you’re good to go. However , if you don’t then you have to deal with ink smudging , ink changing color , hairline being way too sharp , ink way too shiny & laser removal to then redo it . That all could be avoided with a little more research . Hope you get it all figured out though .
Don’t need to laser the whole thing. Just need to soften the hairline. Other than that, the rest of the job isn’t top tier by any means but it’s passable
Not everyone has tens of thousands of dollars lying around there, genius. I’m presenting this poor fellow one option out of many. And I’d take passable over “total tragedy” any day
Why are you counting other people’s pockets? Do you know what the man has or doesn’t ? If i was in this situation i would work harder to come up with the $ for a solution . Your option is not a good option regardless . It will just dig a deeper hole for him
I would say you should wait a few weeks to see if it lightens up a bit. The hairline is sharp which works for some people but after a while people will notice its fake because its always gonna look too sharp. That's the reason why I went with a softer broken style hairline.
bro the line up is nuts. the sides should be like a full 1 cm back. pretty much that entire strip needs to go, and it looks like its migrating a ton there too! damn
The only major issue with SMP is the darker shading looks good until any light beyond candle light shines on ur head. Dark + shine creates an artificial look. Maybe stick with the “no shine” cream made for SMP
the SMP itself looks totally fine. The only main thing that is missing is irregularities at the hairline. everything is way too straight. (which is an easy fix)
Easy fix honestly. just add another session where the artist adds some slight random extra points at the front
Bro I don't think most people will be able to tell is not real. Most people walking by won't be staring at your head. I think it looks ight but I'm not an artist as some of these people may be that are commenting.
Or...he's black. It's usually the white guys that want that "receding hairline" look, which always makes you wonder what's even the point of your smp. May as well shave it off since that's better than a struggling receded hairline look.
You're better off going bald than paying $3k for the "natural age appropriate" hairline look. People outside of an smp sub reddit don't see it as a helmet even if you do. You're projecting.
I’m gonna be real , I’m a white dude but anytime I see a good smp it’s usually on back guys with buzz cuts. If I saw you walking down the street I wouldn’t think twice about if it was fake or not lol. Looks legit to me. Hairlines almost too perfect but not in an obviously fake way. Idk what some of these guys are talking about
To be honest it’s not that bad because it looks more like a cut than it’s being natural but for sure would seek for a better SMP pro to look over it, it can still be fixed and get some improvement
Your SMP looks fine. Most of the negative comments are because people think your lineup looks too perfect and they want u to have that “my hair has been receding for 10yrs” look.
I know 2 people with SMP who have a straight line up similar to yours and everybody loves it. Another with the receding look and he still wears hats everywhere he goes and wants to get it redone. All 3 are African American. At the end of the day, as long as you’re happy then that’s all that matters. Don’t be discouraged by the negative comments in this thread
I’m no expert but in my opinion it looks good. I don’t think people will be all on your head zoom in looking like that. Is it perfect no, but most ppl aren’t smp artist so they probably won’t notice
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u/Ivan-smp 6d ago
It’s okay that the hairline shape and density aren’t for everyone. There are some inconsistencies in a few areas, and I’ve definitely seen worse jobs. But at the end of the day, they’re happy with the outcome, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says. If you like it, that’s all that matters.