You probably won’t have a specific design in mind, but you should have a theme or idea of what you want, which should include the style. Different artists work well with different styles and it is important that you find someone who matches up well with what you want from your tattoo.


If you’re after a colourful, incredibly detailed hyper-realism piece you’re probably not going to do to the world’s best traditional style artist, because for all you know he can’t do realism to save his life. Black and grey, or colour?






You should decide on whether you want a colourful tattoo or something that is black and grey, because the concepts are slightly different and a lot of artists do have a preference – some artists will work exclusively in black and grey, some will only include small amounts of colour and so on and so forth; not everyone can do everything, and sometimes they simply don’t want to.
 You need to get together a list of artists that you like.


This is possibly one of the more time consuming parts of the process, but also one of the most fun, as you get to look at a lot of tattoos which might inspire your design a little more. So – how do you find these artists?






Start by looking for local tattoo studios and make note of artists you like working at those studios. Look at lists for top artists, top tattoos and make note of the artists whose work stands out to you.






Find pages on social networks like Facebook for tattoo studios, conventions and supplies companies – artists that are associated with these pages will often have joined these groups or liked the pages, so you can find them through these.






You can also check the upcoming conventions where you are and look at which artists are set to attend (sometimes artists will discount your tattoo if you get it done at a convention, so it can be worth looking at who’s going where and when – link to European convention list can be found in the sources).






If you’re struggling to find artists that really capture your attention, try joining some tattoo enthusiast forums and asking the users there for suggestions. Be sure to tell them your location and how far you’re willing to travel, as well as what you’re looking for from the artist. Most tattoo forums are full of people with experience of a wide range of tattoo artists, so they may have some fantastic suggestions for you.
 Once you have a nice long list of artists you like you can start to narrow it down. Artists you’re not willing to travel too far for can be taken off the list if you’re quite a distance from them. Then you can start looking at the quality of the tattoos, how frequently they post tattoos and so on and so forth.


You should ideally be looking for an artist that posts new stuff on a fairly regular basis, as this means they are actively tattooing and getting work, but not so busy that you’re going to be on a waiting list for five years if you pick them (unless you’re willing to wait five years of course).






They should post fresh and healed work, as it gives you a better idea of the quality of their work, particularly with black and grey artists, some of which will look completely different when healed despite looking fantastic fresh.






Take your time to decide on the artists that suit your needs best – then contact them. You should contact two or three artists unless you’ve decided on the perfect artist for you.
 If you’ve decided on an artist you love at this point, then fantastic. If not you probably have two or three artists you can’t choose between, and that’s fine. Contact them and base your decision on their communication – after all the artist might not even be willing to work with your idea, you need to confirm that they’re interested in the job.


When you contact the artist, they generally don’t really care why you want the tattoo, and can’t be bothered to read several paragraphs about how deep and meaningful the design is to you. What they want is information.






Explain to the artist the theme or idea you want for your tattoo, and include some reference pictures that might give the artist a better idea of what you want it to look like or even just tattoos that you quite like so that they get an idea of what you like to see in tattoos and what you don’t, this will make it easier for them to come up with ideas that you are likely to enjoy.






If you are a considerable distance from the artist you may want to explain this, particularly if you will be unable to attend a consultation with them as a result. If you are able to attend a consultation offer your availability to the artist in your email, you will have a higher chance of success if you are willing to make yourself flexible to their schedule.
 Artists tend to be pretty busy people, and you can probably guess by how often they update their social media how busy they are and how often they manage to sit down at a computer. So you could be waiting a little while for a reply to your email, but be patient. For some artists the average response time is a week or even two, so if you want a good, popular artist who gets numerous emails every day then you need to be willing to wait. If you still haven’t decided on an artist you’re going to go with you may choose to use the response time or even the enthusiasm of the response as your deciding factor. As stated previously – some artists are going to be more interested in your idea than others.
 Now that you’ve found your ideal artist you don’t want to lose them, and you want to be sure that you stay on their good side if you’re thinking about getting more work from them in the future.


Once you have both agreed on the idea and you’ve answered any questions the artist might have, you can start to ask about the costs, dates and times. First establish what the tattoo is likely to cost you, this is rarely set in stone but the artist should be able to tell you what their hourly rate is and how many hours they estimate the design would take to tattoo (you may not have a design in mind yet, so this might not be an accurate estimation) and they will be able to tell you how much they charge for a deposit.






You can use this information to decide on when to set your appointment. Of course in order to set the appointment you will need to put down the deposit, to be sure you have that money available when making the arrangements and set the date of your appointments for times when you are sure you’re going to have the money available. Suggest a few suitable dates and compare those with your artists schedule in order to settle on a date that suits both parties.
Decide on the Tattoo.
Make a list of Artists.
Narrow down the List.
Contact the Artist(s).
Wait.
Smooth out the Details.
{"src": "wikihow-all_test", "title": "How to Choose a Body Piercing or Tattoo Studio2"}