rocketqueen

i had a really rough go today about this tattoo, i work for a dermatologist and basically broke down in his office (messy tears and all!) and asked him about laser options. i keep going back and forth with the idea of either going through the expensive/painful/gruelling process of lasering this thing off, or speaking with my artist and adding the small changes to the owl to make him more what i envisioned :(

i like your birds :) they look pretty and feminine.

is full removal ever actually possible? say in a perfect situation, if a client is dedicated to their treatment course, do you believe complete or close to complete removal is attainable? i do have another question - i have heard that some lasers will turn white ink dark. how common is this and does it disqualify an individual from being a candidate for laser if there are small white highlights in their tattoo?

@Valpolicella i feel like i've had post tattoo anxiety after all 3 of mine actually lol...it's like this moment of "o_O my skin is no longer bare and never will be again, what was i thinking?!" i find this feeling difficult to shake during the healing stages of the tattoo because it's so scabby/peely looking. it's almost as if the brain perceives it as a wound or foreign body that will somehow go away, like all other wounds...it's hard to imagine at that stage the tattoo being a part of your skin forever. i'm really prone to anxiety, overanalyzing, and overthinking with everything though so i think it's just part of my brain chemistry lol. once my other ones healed and became soft, smooth, and flush with the rest of my skin, they totally became a part me. i can't even remember those areas ever being bare lol. hoping this happens with my owl, especially once it's healed and then fixed up to how i want it! i'm glad you love your tattoo now :) what is it of?

thanks SStu, my next session is booked for the end of march so i have about 4 months to really think about things and get my final ideas together. i'm sure by then i'll know a little better what i'm looking for. still though, do you think if i decide to make changes at that point that it would be okay to ask the artist? is that bad client etiquette?

i love this thread! this is our boy ninja, 7 year old purebred Siamese. he has heart disease and chronic heart failure but he is stable and doing really well! he's a beauty :)

thank you all so much that replied. you guys are all SO friendly and helpful (i kinda got virtually yelled at on another forum for posting a similar question so thank you all for being genuinely kind and helpful and not making me feel stupid!). you are all absolutely right. the tattoo is actually looking a lot better in terms of the shading etc, the way it's settling it making it look super well done. i do trust my artist and love his style - i cannot take that away from him. and i definitely understand the mistake i made by having a really concrete preconceived notion about the outcome of my tattoo. i honestly blame myself for getting so attached to the pic of that other tattoo. will go into my next round of work with a different perspective! however - one last dilemma. there are some small details/changes that i think could be added to this tattoo once it's fully healed that will make me love it as much as my initial vision for it. I'm really really apprehensive about asking my artist to make these changes though. again, he is a really nice/cool person and a talented artist, so i don't want my asking him to tweak the existing tattoo to come off as offensive or ungrateful anything like that. do you guys think it's common for people to make little changes/add-ons to an existing piece? or example, it's a greyscale owl but currently his ears are rounded and i want to make them a bit more pointy, and i just wanted to make his pupils slightly larger (they're really tiny right now and he looks really pissed off lol, just wanted to make his eyes a bit softer to maybe feminize the overall look of the tattoo)

hello all, my name is laura, i am from a small town outside of toronto, ontario, canada. i have 3 tattoos so far, one small on my wrist, one large forearm piece (covers my right forearm), and i just got a new portrait of an owl on my left shoulder to start a possible half sleeve of wild animals done in realism. i joined this forum because of my plans to get more tattoos and as a way to gain some insight and advice from others, especially when it comes to planning a larger piece that i have in mind. i am struggling right now with my most recent addition - my artist is very talented and my new tattoo itself is actually quite beautiful. however, it just did not turn out as i envisioned it would, so i'm feeling a bit of post-tattoo anxiety, and concerned about how to go forward with the larger piece i have in mind. so as my story goes for those who will be patient enough to read through this: months ago when i booked this most recent session, i sent the artist a photo of a tattoo that i came across online and absolutely LOVED. rookie mistake, getting attached to someone else's tattoo, and believe me, i absolutely understand that my artist would never copy another artist's work/design, nor did i want him to. he ended up basing the design for my tattoo more on a photograph of a great horned owl as opposed to the photo i sent to him, which i was fine with at the time of my session because i wanted to put my own spin on the owl, and make it my own as to not copy the original picture i had found. we discussed some features of both pictures that he said he would incorporate into my final piece. i was excited to be getting something that i knew i already loved, but make it my own and more original, but the end result was very unlike what i had imagined, and now i am having a really tough time detaching from what i was hoping this tattoo would look like. i realize now obviously that i should have been more direct in communicating what i wanted, but i trust my artist and felt that i had nothing to be concerned about. he also did my other large forearm piece that i was thrilled with, it was exactly what i had in mind. so with the new one, i half expected for it to go the same way with zero afterthought. i have some images saved that i was hoping to use as reference for the rest of this arm piece, but now i'm worried about how to go about communicating this to the artist without a) offending his artistic style and b) making it seem like i expect verbatim copies of another artist's work. i'm just having trouble with knowing what to expect as an end result if my tattoo does not end up resembling the images that i love in the first place. anyways to anyone that read this, thanks. just was wondering if anyone has gone through something similar or has any advice.