Thanks for all the input! Life got busy and I forgot about my post.
I realize I was vague in my original post. What I was trying to convey was that I felt the only way I could communicate what tattoo design I wanted was to provide a copy of something similar. I wouldn't be asking the artist to copy it, but was afraid she wouldn't be open to that because she wouldn't want to even use it for reference. Not sure I'm making it any more clear. I guess I'm nervous about just letting someone create a tattoo without me having a more concrete idea of what I want. Even though I like her work.
Thank you all for responding!
- - - Updated - - -
While waiting and reasearching for my first tattoo consult in May, I found another artist whose work I just love and she was available. So May will be my second tattoo.
However, I need some advice. There's a communication issue between me and my tattoo artist. Its probably too late to change the outcome, but I don't know whether I should tell her what my POV of the situation is. Out of both my need for "closure" and for her to learn as well.
I just got home from the second session on my first tattoo. The first session went great. All black outlining. It came out beautifully and I was very pleased. Today I went back for what I thought was going to be more black shading and a little bit of color. But it looks like I'm going to end up with a full color tattoo.
At the initial consultation we decided on what the basic design would be. At that time I said I wanted mostly black with some color as an accent/counter point. She said she would work something up and brought up that I could decide how much or how little color I wanted at a later session.
After all the black outlining was done at the first session she described how she would shade it in next session. She even showed me a couple of pictures of blackwork tattoos from her Instagram to illustrate what she was going to do. Again she said we would discuss color at the next session.
Today she seemed to want to do more color (both in intensity and coverage) than I wanted and than I thought we had discussed. I showed her a picture of a tattoo that had the kind of minimal color shading that I wanted. She seemed to be on board. The first areas of color came out with more coverage than I wanted. I didn't tell her that. I didn't ask why it was so different from what we had talked about 30 min ago. It was too late to do anything about it.
As we talked about the next section of color I could tell the conversation was going off the rails. I tried to steer the concept back to mostly black, minimal color. I asked about the black shading she had said she would be doing. I don't remember exactly what she said but it was non-committal. She wasn't dismissing me but she wasn't connecting with me either. She was probably frustrated. I was frustrated, but I wanted to trust her. She does beautiful work.
At the next stopping point she asked me what I thought. Again, way more color coverage than I believe we had agreed on. This time I only said that, probably due to the lighting, I couldn't see much difference between the first color and second color. They were meant to be in the same color family, it's just that I couldn't tell the difference.
I probably should have said nothing.
It was at this point she said she wanted to stop. That my indecision was causing her to doubt herself, that she felt as though she was "working blind" because I wasn't sure what I wanted, and that she didn't feel she could do her best work under this circumstance. She even implied that I was questioning her work in such a way as to undermine her standing with her colleagues. (She's a guest artist at the studio.) "See that girl over there? She's trusting him to do his thing. I work best when I can do the work in the way I know will result in the best tattoo."
I was floored! Her tone wasn't rude, yet I still felt as though I'd been scolded for being a bad client.
She asked me to think about what I want and to bring pictures next time if I could find any that showed what I wanted. Seriously? I just did! It didn't produce the result I wanted.
I have no idea how or where it all went so wrong. Two weeks ago we were on the same page (or so I thought). I don't know what happened in the intervening two weeks.
I don't know what to do or say. I don't know how we could have such widely different interpretations of the words each of us were speaking. If I express, again, what I want, even if I can find pictures, I have no idea if she'll be on board or feel like I'm interfering with her creative process. If I try to revisit our conversations and remind her of what we talked about I don't know how she'll take. Will she see me as difficult? Just try to get it finished and get me out of there?
I'm so bummed that what started out as such a positive experience turned into something so wonky. It got weird and I don't know how to fix it.
Just to be clear, if I just let her do what she wants and feels is best, it will be a beautiful tattoo. She's very talented. But it won't be what I wanted.
Any advise on how to handle this going forward?
