Words you never want to hear out of your tattoo artist's mouth: Oh, shit.
It's rare, but it happens. Sometimes it's the tattooist's fault, and sometimes it's the client's fault. Either way, both parties need to think before they ink.
These six cautionary anecdotes from tattoo artists on a Reddit thread are more than enough proof of that.
"It was my second legit in shop tattoo, I was to do free tattoos for friends only for a few months before I was allowed to get actual clients. An old friend from high school made an appointment for a nautical star. I did the outline no problem, and started packing in color. I was going around the points filling in the left sides black and when I got to the last point I filled in the right side instead. I felt horrible. We worked it out to where she was happy and tried to tell me not to worry but I did, and still do."
"I've been tattooing for four years, but I will always consider myself a student of this art and am always learning new things. That being said, I should mention that a lot of tattooing is taking risks, trial and error, etc.
"Well, one day when I was in my first year, I was tattooing a yellow sunflower with a blue background and some script. Seems pretty simple, right? I was so excited to start right away into the sunflower that I ignored my training and did all of my light colors, yellows, white highlights etc first. I finish that and move on to the dark/medium/light blues for the background, and it only took one misguided wipe of the excess dark blue into the yellows of the sunflower to permanently stain what was once a pastel yellow sunflower into a lime green mess.
"TL;DR: That day I learned to do your dark colors first and wipe away from the tattoo.
"At first I quietly freaked out and just tried to scrub it with green soap, but it wasn't budging. I then told her (bullshittingly) that it would go back to normal and if she needed a touch up, those were free. I don't remember how much I'd charged her but it was a ridiculously cheap 'Hey I'm still learning' price.
"I mean, she knew what she had signed up for. But I wasn't like a first week tattooer apprentice at that point, so it was still totally embarrassing and shameful. I saw her again months later and while it wasn't fluorescent green, it was still pretty obviously greenish. She showed me and then we didn't talk about it further. Cringetacular."
"I used to work in a shop out in Fresno, and I was an apprentice at the time. At this shop, I didn't yet have my own booth. I was working on this girl and just about to finish when the light that was clamped to the counter behind me fell on the girl who was laying on her stomach. It caught her on fire immediately and burned her pretty good. I was needle down when this occurred. It didn't go well for her. She got a nice black line where it didn't belong. Needless to say, we were both so shaken up from the ordeal, she ended up coming over and I got her one of my nice shirts to replace hers, didn't charge her, and smoked her out, was a good female bonding experience. We ended up friends. Could have been sued probably. That lamp went to the garbage despite my shop owners "opinion". Still feel bad 6.5 years later. I quit not long after."
"I do stick and poke tattoos without a gun, mostly among my friends. Sometimes I'll start doing it at a party and end up doing it for hours and hours as the line gets longer. I use commercial tattoo needles and inks and gloves and green soap and sterilize/throw away everything but when I first got into it, it was just sewing needles and india ink. I'm a lot better now…
"Back when I got started in 2002 this girl wanted a tat of some 'flames' between her boobs. What she ended up with was something I'll be ashamed of for the rest of my life. I'll think about her from time to time when I open my tattoo bag and it makes me think I should just throw this shit away. I've fucked up other tattoos before but this early one is definitely my worst. Don't have a photo, never want to see it again.
"Then again, I was doing tats at a party recently and someone asked to use some gear to put a tattoo of a 'plastic bag' (Katy Perry reference) on someone else's leg that kind of really sucked… So I'm not so bad."
"I'm visiting a girl from school and some guy from her neighborhood begged me to tattoo a pitch fork really big on his arm ([it] was his gang symbol). I was reluctant but gave in. So I'm doing this with a needle dot by dot and it's taking forever. This gang member is bleeding a lot and it looks like shit. I tell him let's take a break because it's bleeding so much and pick it up on another day. I never saw the guy ever again."
"When I was first out of my apprenticeship, I had a guy that hung around the shop wanting me to tattoo him. It was one of my first pieces, and it was on his inner forearm. Two primary colors used on this piece [were] yellow and black. (Two pool balls making a yin yang.) I got the outline 'decently,' but the color packing, it wasn't going in for me. I did the black half, then the yellow. Touched up some of the black and then wiped it, passing over the way overworked yellow skin… leaving a dirty brownish tint. Like pool balls in dirt. My teacher covered it up once it was healed."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
