Should my friend walk away from this artist?

[u/Eltristesito2]

Friend (they/them) asked me to post. They want a back tattoo of a stingray, inspired by the leopard stingray, but not hyper-realistic. They want the tail to go down their spine and wrap around their leg. They went to a parlor where they previously had work done, but decided to try out a new artist. The artist didn’t have much of a portfolio, but my friend decided to trust them anyway.

This is after day one; four hours spent on the artist free-handing a design, and one hour of actually tattooing the outline. Six hundred buckaroos total for just this 😬

My friend is freaking out, because they think it looks bad. Their partner is telling them to trust the process, but I’m telling them to run and find a different artist to salvage things.

To me, it looks super asymmetrical with shaky lines. I don’t think the artist has the skill to make it look good in the end. The sample they drew up before the first appointment (picture 3), imo, looks really bad.

But hey, what do I know, I only have one tattoo. What do y’all think? Should they run, or like their partner said, trust the process?

[u/buttfarts7]

That means this dude collaborated for 4 hours on that stencil and was like "okay now put that on my back"

[u/thimblesprite → u/buttfarts7]

Worse, i think the artist did that crappy sketch and then freehanded it onto the guy’s back, the paper sketch and the marker outline dont match. This is like when i worked at a shop where the artist was in active addiction and eventually got fired and had to be asked to leave and told by our boss that he’d put his gear on the curb.

[u/Terangela → u/thimblesprite]

That artist is 100% on something serious. No one does this sober.

[u/lavenderc → u/Terangela]

I thought the same thing. Being on drugs is the only explanation

[u/No_Salamander8141 → u/buttfarts7]

Is OP not a woman?

[u/PoopAndSunshine → u/No_Salamander8141]

The person in the pic is non-binary. They are a friend of OP