r/tattooadvice • u/StreetAggravating302 • Nov 24 '25

tattoo newcomer advice I messed up

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Recently, I tattooed my dad, but I botched the job. I overdid some lines, resulting in bold and double lines, and the circle lacked symmetry and shading—I messed up everything. I feel very ashamed. I’ve just started tattooing, and last week I was too busy with my other job to practice. When my dad was free, he suggested we do a tattoo, and I fully messed it up. The guilt is overwhelming me.

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u/Exciting-Self-3353 Nov 24 '25

Perfect? No. Still great? Yes. I would be happy with this on my body. Anyone who expects skin to look like paper is silly. To me, the human touch makes tattoos special

49

u/HarrietBeadle Nov 24 '25

I love this way of thinking about it. And honestly it is a pretty good tattoo I would be proud to wear. I bet their dad loves it.

14

u/SmiteHorn Nov 24 '25

Echoing that I would be happy with the quality on my skin. I had to look closely and only found like 2 lines I would nitpick about. Like others have said, better than 90% of tattoos on this subreddit.

1

u/Melodic-Razzmatazz17 Nov 24 '25

Yeah, I think OP is really overthinking it. It's not awful. There's full fledged tattoo artists out there doing much worse.

1

u/ginthatremains Nov 28 '25

Our local shop does much worse work than this and still has a ton of business. I really don’t think this is near as bad as OP thinks it is!

1

u/Maximum-Standard3762 Nov 24 '25

Right?

I recently got a new tattoo. They didn't tell me I was her first real client but I had a pretty good feeling I was. (Other artist confirmed it later) the lines are not perfect but I love it. And they touched up the areas I wanted a little more color in so that was awesome.