r/tattooing

I’m getting my knee blasted at the beginning of November and I CANNOT wait! I’ve wanted to get tattooed by this artist for more than a year. I’ve been saving up for months. I have a huge blank space on my leg patchwork sleeve that I am stoked to fill in. I want a traditional style floral piece (I said I was open to anything but gave her some inspo pics) with blackout shading. I know, I’m insane for asking to get my knee blacked out but I think it’ll look so cool.
I have never used numbing cream. I don’t judge people for it, but for me, part of the experience of the tattoo is the pain. However, I am considering it for this 6 hour session because I want to get it all done. What are your thoughts on numbing cream? Would it be helpful? If I decide I might want to do this, I’ll obviously reach out to the artist first to make sure she’s okay with that.
Another question, how much should I tip? It’s $160 an hour for 6 hours, and I paid a $300 deposit. This will be my largest and most expensive piece. Do I tip like $50 an hour, 20%, $200 and a nice bottle of liquor?

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getting my first proper tattoo next month and i keep seeing completely different opinions on pain depending on placement.

i’m doing a half sleeve from the shoulder down. my artist wants to work top-down, which seems pretty normal, but i’m wondering about saving the inner bicep and elbow ditch for later sessions.

every chart makes those areas sound awful, but then you find people saying they weren’t that bad at all

for the artists here, do you actually notice certain areas being consistently worse for clients, or is pain really too individual for those charts to mean much?

also, has anyone who’s had multiple areas tattooed noticed a real difference between them? not looking for a pain ranking, just trying to figure out how predictable it actually is

For context, I'm 5'4 and I weigh approximately 190 lb, I'm getting married sometime next year in the fall so I'm planning on losing a bunch of weight before then, I have a tattoo I want to get in the week of Thanksgiving this coming November, I want to get it on my left bicep, but I have a lot of fat in my arms, if I lose the weight will the tattoo look different after the weight is gone? Will it look bad? Should I wait to get the tattoo until after I lose weight?