Quality drop significantly after joining a shop
I recently started at a private shop under "apprenticeship" aka I'm the shop bitch for my owner and all the cleaning, appointments ect. But I'm already tattooing clients for little or no cost. I'm working near 50 hour weeks, 8 hours 6 days a week and I get a flat rate of $237 a week which I'm grateful for because I know most apprenticeships are unpaid. I get 50/50 for paid tattoos.
My quality has dropped SO badly. I've done 3 this week and every single one of them I've been horribly disappointed with and my mentor hasn't been soft on me about it. I can't even seem to pull a good line anymore and I have a near full sleeve on myself and 20+ I've done from home that have been very good quality. Decent lines, clean shading, good blending, I've only had a couple of blow outs EVER and I even have a half sleeve black out ornamental on myself with no issues. Definitely not PERFECT work by any means, but work I was proud of. And it's like all of a sudden this is my first time holding my machine. It's killing my drive, I'm so burnt out, I have so much passion for art and my mentor says if I don't "eat sleep and breathe tattoos" I won't make it. But this has pushed me so deep into a hole about my work. Is it just jitters?? What can I do to combat this? I feel like I'm ruining my own dream.
First 3 photos are home done, last two are ones I did this week. I know the first 3 still aren't perfect, but they're significantly better than what I've put out this week. Cropping to reserve some type of anon.