There are certain differences with hand poke tattoo and electric machine tattooing to be aware of
You will not (or shouldn’t) be able to tattoo a skin area you want because of the skin there is too thin or too stretchy, making it hard to hand poke and the risk of the tattoo not aging very well over time. Common areas that suffer this problem are the ribcage and the inner arm.
A common misconception is that stick and poke tattoos hurt more. Most of the people who have tried both machine and hand poke tattooing agree that hand made tattoos hurt less, sometimes way less. There are less incisions made in the skin, and this means less trauma and therefore less pain, with healing time being much quicker too. However, pain is not a reason to decide whether you should get a stick and poke tattoo over a machine tattoo. In both cases you should put up with the pain, it only lasts as long as the session and the tattoo is “forever.”
The simple answer to the question “Do hand poke tattoos fade over time?” is no. Single needle style tattoos, which has nothing to do with stick and poke tattoos, are rumored to fade (specially when not done by a very talented artist), but again, this style is done by machine with a 1RL, and has nothing to do with stick and poke tattooing. This said, there is always a chance a tattoo will need a touch up, but this is a possibility when opting for both machine or hand tattooing.
Speaking of a tattoo of a certain size, stick’n’poke tattoos will generally take longer than machine tattoos. How long a tattoo takes to complete depends on different factors. To create a solid lines when hand poking takes longer, as the tattoo is being made up of dots, and to get this to look good takes patience, skill, and… time. How well your skin takes the ink also matters. However, time should be a determining factor when choosing between machine free and machine tattooing.
