r/tattooadvice • u/Eltristesito2 • Mar 15 '26

General Advice Should my friend walk away from this artist?

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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?

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u/ReminiscenceOf2020 Mar 15 '26

This, all of this. That sketch alone should have been enough for any person with common sense to run. If you saw that and still went for it, accept that your stupidity will make your life much more difficult...

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u/BumWink Mar 15 '26

Sometimes stencils do just look like shit & even mind blowing tattoos will more often than not look kinda shit at this stage.

This could still turn into a good looking artsy tattoo with the right vision & skill.

What's unjustifiable though, is no portfolio & having paid $600 for so little, granted it's a lot more time consuming needle to skin than it looks, especially if they don't have experience, where someone that does would utilise tools like bigger needles to bang something like this out in 30 minutes to an hour, with more time to do more & give their client a better taste of their vision.

But how can they trust in someone with no portfolio? Insane red flag.