Respected tattoo artist used AI?
Hey guys! I went on vacation to Japan in April and really wanted to get a tattoo there. The image I sent as reference is the picture with the dragon on the arm. I found a very talented artist I really liked. She has thousands of followers on Instagram and five stars on Google with over 500 reviews. She’s also seems to have done quite a few dragon tattoos according to her reviews. We conversed about a week before my appointment and she said she’s going to try to do a very similar composition, but asked if she could change the style of the head and the feet. I said I trusted her as an artist and she was free to do that.
The day of my appointment I noticed that she sent me a message the night before with four drawings. My boyfriend found it odd that she was able to draw four detailed drawings in less than a week. I saved the two images that I posted here as they were closest to the reference that I sent her. I went to grab breakfast before heading into my appointment and took a closer look at the images. I had a terrible gut feeling that this was AI. In one of the drawings she sent me, it’s nearly an identical copy, and paste of the reference that I sent her. Even if she drew it herself, it felt a bit icky to copy the original artist line by line. It looks like she asked AI to generate the full drawing. In the drawing with the flowers, I noticed that the feet had four claws except for one that had three. As an artist myself, that’s not the type of mistake that gets overlooked. The scales also made no sense and the flowers sort of blended into the background. There’s also a weird part on the bottom that looks like she sketched it in herself.
I felt uncomfortable and messaged her (as shown above) asking for the speed drawings. At this point, I knew I was going to cancel. When she couldn’t provide it and immediately offered a refund, that sealed the deal for me. Oh yeah, and she blocked me and unsent her drawings in the chat. Technically she didn’t deny using ai and it’s not illegal but felt extremely deceitful.
So I was wondering, how many artists actually do this? I found another artist that I wanted to work with who is also in Japan. I attached an image of her work on a torso and I believe there’s also inconsistency in the claws/scales.
I only have two smaller tattoos I got before AI was popularized/invading art spaces. Is this a problem with all art? Are dragons too complicated for people? Should I just draw my own tattoo if I have the ability to do so and have someone tattoo on me? This experience was very disappointing as I was looking forward to getting a tattoo on a great vacation. I left without one but perhaps next time I’ll get a small souvenir.