Am I overthinking all of this???

[Cb0606]

This is long. Sorry. 
 

Hey guys, so I’m new to tattoos. I finally took the plunge and started my sleeve. I’ve been wanting tattoos my whole life but never wanted to regret anything so I wanted to make sure it was something that meant a lot to me. I have a wife and 2 kids now and my mom that I love to death now so I decided to get a sleeve with a piece for each of them in it, individually. 
 

I realize sleeves aren’t cheap. I was willing to pay pretty decent money but I couldn’t afford the most expensive artists.  I found a shop that does alot of what I like.. black and grey realism. Art looked great, so I emailed the shop and one of the artists got back to me and said he’d love to do my sleeve. Great. Let’s get it started. It’s a little pricier per hour than I wanted but hey, you pay for good work so I said yes. 
 

We have started the shoulder piece recently, Which is the piece for my son. His middle name is Atlas so I wanted the Atlas Greek God. He showed me the design and I told him it looked great aside from the smoke around it. I didn’t want to have so much smoke filler. I wanted the sleeve to blend and overlap. So he only worked on the main part that day…. So the main part took 10 hours. Does that seem logical? Way over my budget for just the shoulder piece considering he wasn’t even done with it. And to me it was hella dark but what do I know? I’m a tattoo newbie and it could lighten up. ok so next session he gave me a few ideas to replace the smoke so that we can overlap everything else later on. Cool. I was letting him do his thing. He added a Greek window pane above the original piece…… and added a tiny smoke border around the original as well. Another 8 hour session, unfinished. Again very dark. I guess my question is, should it be taking this long? Am I getting screwed? I’ve spent more on this shoulder piece than I really wanted for majority of the sleeve. And to make it worse, I think he’s making it too dark. I just finished the last session 3 days ago so it’s in the healing process and so it looks crazy but I dunno. I just feel defeated. His detailing looks good but it’s just so dark compared to the drawings. Any advice would be great. I’m sorry this was so long but it’s consuming me. 


 

So that took nearly 20 hours. Seems crazy to me. And he didn’t even finish the window pane and I don’t see any depth like the picture. Im hoping it shows up after healing…. The window pane is bleeding into the original piece   Right now so don’t look at that..

please tell me that I’m just being crazy and overthinking all of this lol 🙏

 

thanks!!

[Hogrider]

How long since you got the original piece? Without that information, it's hard to tell if it's too dark.

As far as comparing a drawing to what goes on your skin, you can't. It's dark, but too dark?  Depends on how long you've had it.

As far as going over budget - didn't he give you an estimate? If he said he'd be 4 hours and took 10, then you've got a legitimate complaint. If you didn't ask how many hours the piece would take, that's on you. Some tattooers are just slow.

You said, "I found a shop that does alot of what I like." Well, a SHOP doesn't tattoo you. Did you look at the specific person doing the tattoos before you committed? I mean did you look at ALL of his work that he has posted? If not, you should have. If you did, does yours look darker that what you saw?

It sounds like you and the artist didn't do a very good job of communicating. 

4-6 weeks to heal. I'd let it heal before you do anything else.

[Cb0606]

Original is still new as well. I hear what you’re saying. I just need to ask more questions. He doesn’t communicate well and I guess neither do I. The smoke he said was going to take 4 hours. So I guess I figured since he wasn’t filling in black smoke everywhere that the window pane would be the same time frame if not quicker. I didn’t ask. I just figured. That’s my bad. Thanks for the input 

[Maynard]

Looks really good. Also it’s just a tattoo. Don’t expect too much from it. I’d be happy if I had that piece.

[Hogrider]

16 hours ago, Cb0606 said:

So I guess I figured ...

There's your mistake. Although I agree that the tattoo artist should communicate thoroughly, if you are new to tattoos, you need to ask the questions. "How many hours will this take" is a pretty basic question. He should be able to give you a ball park estimate. It's your skin and your money, you should be informed up front, if that's important to you. My artist never gives me estimates because we change things and usually add things as we go along. Each of my sleeves (with chest panel) were around 50 hours.

[oboogie]

You are crazy and overthinking this.

Seriously. Ask more questions. Stop obsessing.