My boyfriend and I came in here late last night (11.13.2016 around 9/10pm) for a walk in tattoo. It took quite some time for my boyfriend and I to really decide what we wanted. At the time of our walk... Read More
My boyfriend and I came in here late last night (11.13.2016 around 9/10pm) for a walk in tattoo. It took quite some time for my boyfriend and I to really decide what we wanted. At the time of our walk-in, the artist available was doing a tattoo for another client, which is totally fine. The piercer at the shop was extremely patient in helping us find the right lettering and finding designs we might like. My boyfriend and I are both fairly adorned in ink. I've made quite a few mistakes with tattoos in my past, mainly being doing copy and paste tattoos. Meaning, I have seen artwork I liked either online or in person, and simply handed it to an artist to put it on my body as is. This is wrong because the original artist has no credibility and it's an unoriginal approach to something that will be on your body for your entire life. Since then, I may have a picture that I am inspired by, but I always ask my artist to have their own artistic take on it. I was between two ideas when I met with the artist. One was some lettering, the other was a line tattoo of a lion. For the lettering, I wanted a typewriter style and I figured that wasn't too difficult, and he could just draw up a few fonts for me and I could chose one. Instead, he decided to take fonts off of a website. Which I guess is fine, but I feel that it took longer and the artist simply just didn't want to put in that kind of time or effort. I showed the artist some examples of what I was thinking of for the lion, but what it seemed he wanted to do was straight up print out a picture, trace it and put it on my body. I was hoping I could give him a reference, and then he'd draw his own interpretation and give it his own style. It really made me discouraged to get a tattoo from him. I was worried I had made a mistake with doing a walk in and not researching this artist first (though the oxygen ink website doesn't make it very easy to differentiate the artists). I asked to see some of his work, and it's absolutely nothing personal, I just didn't like his style of tattooing for me personally. So I decided to take the route of the letter tattoo. That way, he could do the copy and paste method he wanted to do, and I'd still come out with a completely original tattoo that meant something to me. I was mildly frustrated because the artist just really didn't seem to care about me as a client; not my time, not my experience, and not my body art. He kept taking time from finding fonts on the internet to watch and laugh at the show on TV which wasted a lot of time. Regardless, in the end, I did get a pretty nice tattoo and so did my boyfriend. However, I do want to point out a few extremely hazardous key points the artist missed. One is that he did not wipe down the seat from his previous client. I've been to a lot of tattoo shops and know a lot of artists, and never have I been to a tattoo shop where they don't wipe down the seats before and after every client. That is KEY to keeping things sterile and organized which is absolutely something you need from a tattoo artist. I was very iffy about the artist from that point on. And I was right to be because the next thing is that the artist DID NOT USE A NEW NEEDLE FOR MY BOYFRIEND. All he did, was "sterilize" the same one he used on me by putting a flame to the needle. I chose not to say anything about it, because my boyfriend and I are regularly tested, but I will absolutely shocked and appalled! That is not sterile, that is not professional, that is not safe. For the sake of the artist, I will not be saying who he was, but I do hope someone in the shop reads this, goes through the calendar to see who it was, and approaches him about this problem. Everyone makes mistakes, you live and you learn, and I do not wish for him to be fired. I have no personal animosity towards the artist, but I do not think anything he did throughout the process was ethical, professional, or cleanly. Needless to say, I will not be returning to that artist. However, I see the other artists in the shop are very talented and I may return for their work, but only if I see that they have the work ethic, cleanliness, and professionalism that I expect from an artist. Read Less