r/tattooscratchers

I left my apprenticeship and trust me I tried like hell to hang in there. It wasn’t about the tattooing itself, it was about the environment and my mentor is going through some mid life crisis and stopped teaching me on top of it all. But now I am wondering, how did any of you get into a shop without an apprenticeship? Or do you just have people come to your house that you know? I have a spare room that’s empty that I’m considering using for tattooing, but I also don’t like the idea of strangers having my address.

It’s so vulnerable to write this, please no judgement if possible. I know a lot of you have put up with emotionally abusive apprenticeships and understand.

Also I can tattoo and quite well, but I’m slow and there’s still some gaps in my knowledge I need filled in. But my mentor had me fully unsupervised doing free full color tattoos on clients and they have all healed very well.

I had this person specifically ask for my details to contact me about a tattoo. My god, I’ve never dealt with anything like it. I thought it was typical run of the mill “how much for a tattoo” -“how thick are two planks of wood” type stuff. And it was at first. Kept asking me for a price but wouldn’t respond to my message asking key details like placement, size, shading or no shading etc. you know, the stuff that really decided on the price. I just kept replying to my message politely saying “if you can answer these questions I’ll be able to get you a price”. Still no answer to it really. Just a bunch of other questions. I had a feeling they didn’t really understand what I was saying at all?? Idk.

So I said “hypothetically if it was palm sized and as the reference sent, it would be this much” and then they kept asking for a price still. And finally after several hours they said “a little bigger than that”. So we’re getting somewhere. Nope. Scratch that. New plan. New tattoos. Now I must price 10-20 small tattoos (which again, I don’t know what these would be of or what as we haven’t gotten there yet. And still haven’t). So I suggested a half day or day session and we just get what we can get done. They understood this.

Now we’re on the deciding of what they actually want. They told me some themes so I had a Quick Look on Pinterest for them and sent over some general ideas just to get them started and told them to have a look on the app and take their time to figure out what they want. They don’t know how to use Pinterest now. I try explaining but they kept demanding that I search up all the tattoos and designs they want. Issue here is, I don’t know what they want fully, they won’t tell me, and it’s also not my tattoos. These have to be things they want. And it’s late. I’m not spending my evening searching, saving and sending 50+ designs after I’ve already spent hours dealing with the initial tattoo design which got changed into this. So I gave them some instruction on how to use Pinterest and went to bed.

I woke up to 13 messages from them. “You there?” “Where you gone?” The previous day I couldn’t even be away from my phone for more than 2 hours without them chasing me up. Which is fine if we’re in the middle of something. I wouldn’t dip then. But I’ve done my part. I’ve explained pricing, what we can do. Design ideas, potential directions we could go down artistically. It’s now up to them to figure out what they want and send some ideas my way. There’s not much else I can do without a booking and deposit and the information I’ve asked for multiple times. I suggested an in person consult but nope.

When I responded in the morning they sent me some designs they found. And was figuring out what else they wanted. I suggested some more Disney characters as they like Disney and they said “yea but which ones?” Idk??? Your favourite ones?? Why would I know that. I just have the feeling that this person wants me to basically spoon feed them the entire process. I can imagine that if they book in, pay a deposit, the time between that and the appointment will not be a very fun time for me. Daily updates needed by the hour. Mind you, they already have a decent amount of tattoos. They’ve done this whole process multiple times. And the cherry on top, they only respond in voice notes.