Tats

[guppiecat]

My cousin Irony (yes, that's really his name) once spent several years doing Peace Corps work in Tonga.
After he had been there a while, he wanted a tattoo to commemorate his experience. Now, the different
islands have different tattoo styles. The problem with getting a tattoo on his island was a health concern.
Later, he got the opportunity to go to a neighboring, more developed island. He got his tattoo there.

Bear in mind that the different islands have different styles, but Irony anticipated this, so he sketched
what he wanted for the tattoo artist. After much argumentation, the tattoo artist agreed and started the
tattoo. When my cousin got home, and looked in a mirror, he found that he a tattoo on the front of his arm
that matched his island. However, on the back of his arm it was in the style of the other island.

Well, it could have been worse.

Comments

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I was really aware of this when I got mine. It was part of the reason that I checked progress in a mirror as we went- so that if there was a problem I could notify someone (manager type) immediately and refuse to pay until I was satisfied. It's always good to know exactly what you want when you go in- failing that to get a sketch signed and dated by the tattooist and have it safely in your possession prior to the start of the process so that you have some sort of proof as to what they agreed to do. That way if they pull a stunt like either of these, you have evidence to back you up so you can possibly recover damages from them to get it removed. I had a physical copy made of the book cover that mine came from, then I held on to the tracing copy that the tattooist made in case he changed up on my while I was flat on my face. That being said, mine was kind of easy to keep track of in terms of whether or not he was following the agreed upon pattern because it was so large.

[grrscary.livejournal.com]

Part of the thing with tattooing without having to be so paranoid about it is spending some time researching who the artists are, too, what they're like and what their clients have to say about them. A good tattoo artist will be one who is known and open to having you ask questions. They will also be working in a place that is very very clean (which is more my worry then the art itself, honestly...a bad tattoo can be covered or removed. Blood infection or worse are irreversible!).

I suppose I'm lucky, given that a good friend of mine went into tattooing and happened to be good at it...I have no worries about letting her work on my back.