Leaderboard

Yes, it would be totally inappropriate. "Hi, I love your work, but you are too expensive. Can you recommend someone just as good, but cheaper so I can spend my money with your competition?" You'll be unhappy about the price once. You'll be unhappy about a crappy tattoo forever.

1) Paul Dolbleman, Spider Murphy's 2013, Dietzel design. 2) Herb Auerbach, California Electric 2013. Both photos taken today. My hound wanted to be in the pic.

Lasering is much more expensive than good tattooing.

these are some of mine, this took about 4 hours in 2 sessions this took just under 2 hours,it's about 9X9" and this was a 9 hour "one shot" . this one took about 3.5 hours this one took about 3 hours this one 45 min this one under 2 hours here's one in 45 min 20 min

Welcome. Let me ask you this...how big are you thinking? Do you have any restrictions for showing tattoos? These are simplistic designs, so I think going bold would be my first thought. The other thing to consider is how well would this design flow into and/or incorporate with your next tattoo? :)

I would never go ahead with it if I wasnt confident in the artist. I did a lot of research for my first one. I even looked into traveling to get it done but that was not practical for me. But I'm just not sure if I am missing something. How come these other places have just as good of ratings as the place I went, but their work is not up to par. Are script tattoos easier to do than art? Their script tattoos actually look pretty good, but I still wouldnt want to go there judging by their other work. It makes me think there is still a good chance they could mess up. One place doesn't even have a gallery, I will have to go there in person and check it out. And another place I am not even sure if they still do tattoos because when I click the link for tattoos it takes me to their page for piercings. Or their site is broken, which is very likely since it looks like it was made with geocities. I know I will most likely go back to the same artist. I will probably just wait until next year to do it instead of getting a second one right away. *Sigh* I probably knew that before I even asked but I wanted to cover my bases.

Welcome. While I agree that it's slow, hopefully you are happy with your tattoo. To me, that is way more important than the time it took. While it's amazing that some artists are insanely fast, some others just aren't.

Those times are pretty average. I think the difference is yours is REALLY SLOW. Again, think about a different artist perhaps?

It will be important that whatever artist you choose has some experience in cover-ups. That blue peony picture you just posted has elements about it that would assist in a cover-up (black outlines and more options for shading deeper into the flower). Don't be in a hurry. Spend some time on the forum here learning about styles and what makes a good tattoo good.

Welcome to the forum! I will let the more experienced folks offer an opinion on placement.

@viezure: I'm an architect. We have corporate and institutional clients who are often quite traditional on such things, especially for someone my age, who should "know better" ;-) I value my job, am committed to it, and enjoy it too, and my personal point of view is that I don't want to do anything to make clients uncomfortable. That may sound a little like "sucking up," but business is business. Because of those clients I can feed my family and pay the mortgage...and get tattooed! On the other hand we have some clients who I know would not care, and we currently have one tattooed client. But I prefer to to keep business and personal stuff separate but in the proper balance, which had been my big hang up for years.

Done by Tony Nilsson a couple of years ago! (never mind my hairy and ashy armpit)

Bumping this topic - interesting reading! I’ve only got one small tattoo from 40-odd years ago, but I’m planning a back piece. Even though I haven’t started the actual tattoo yet, I have already learned things as I’ve made my decision and started planning. I’m learning that tattooing is a process and that for me most important part of the process is not in the studio, it is in the brain. It took me over 30 years to decide to get my second tattoo. Even though I wanted one, I didn’t think it fit my professional image, and I was afraid of being judged negatively by friends and colleagues. I waffled between “should I or shouldn’t I?” for decades. Over time my desire to get a tattoo grew stronger and stronger. And to complicate matters, my interest evolved from “getting a tattoo” into “getting a very large tattoo.” I couldn’t understand why I was unable to make a decision. I spent a lot of time analyzing it and ended up writing down the whole history of my interest in tattooing, as far back as far as I could remember — every incident, what I saw, what my thoughts were along the way, and what was going on in my life, my feelings of conflict— everything I could think of (condensed, but still fairly long version here). Ultimately that led me to the realization that my indecision was not really about whether or not to get a tattoo, but was really an expression of my inability to be the person that I wanted to be in life. I came to the realization that I had lived my whole life trying to fit into an image of what I perceived that others and my profession wanted me should be, while completely burying what I wanted to be. I realized that I had unwittingly gradually reprogrammed myself to believe that by “fitting in” I would become the “right kind of person.” That may have been one of the most important things I learned about myself in my 60-odd years on the planet. Once I acepted that, it was easy to decide to go ahead with my tattoo project, but more importantly It helped me start to live my life more as I wanted, and move toward a better balance between the professional me and the private me. It was only through trying to decide to get a large tattoo that I was able to find that out about myself. I’m not sure if I could have gotten to that realization any other way. I think that for me it took a confrontation with a desire to do something that in my world was really radical, extreme, and beyond the norm (getting a huge tattoo) to jolt me into exploring and learning something deep in me.

Here are selection of my traditional tattoos. Some i've shared before, some new: Peacock by Luke Jinks (Cloak and Dagger) Elbow rose by Marcos Attwood (Broad Street Tattoo) Dietzel Girl by Tony Hundahl (Rock of Ages) Panther and snake by Valerie Vargas (Modern Classic Tattoo)

...18 hrs ?

Well, Session 2 went better: As @Matej Haviar said, I kept reminding myself that the stoke will pull you through. ha! That and I started an antidepressant/antianxiety that has the benefit of also being used to treat general pain.... so, I sat much better this time. Looking forward to the ass/thighs in March! @Matej Haviar thanks man! your's looks amazing; nice to see the lightening! and thanks for the advice/sharing the experience. I plan to go to the knees, especially because this Buddhist deity is always pictured standing on the heads of demons (apparently held over from the Indian idea of dancing on the heads of your enemies). But I am absolutely stoked to continue!