I agree with you, however tattooist will only put their absolute best tattoos in their portfolio for others to see. I guess this would really be the only way to know if they do great work, but there’s always going to be that risk that they really aren’t all that great after all.
I like word of mouth and seeing really nice tattoos on people make me want to go get tattoos from them. That’s how I got my tattoos in the first place, I was directed to them and I saw the work they did on my friend. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always pan out.
I only had two tattoos when I joined this forum. After only a few weeks I knew I had to do better. I met Anthony Zamora through a co worker and a client of Anthony’s.
I gave him the task of rescuing my leg. He attacked my leg with a hand full of Sharpie markers and one shit load of passion!
I gave him a few things that I wanted. Man hole on my foot, my shoulder lobster, and some of the flowers and leaves. Many of the ideas were his. Lindsay Wilson always wanted to do a raptor. (she did the rainbow lizard on my leg) She still works on my back occasionally. The Pteradactyl is her idea, the Volkswagen was Anthony’s, and the hippy dude was my Idea, but Lindsay made him look like Anthony. They will both be working on me at some point.
We’re constantly tossing future ideas around. I expect he’ll be working on me for years.
You are right that tattoo artists only put their favorite work in their portfolio. But what you can see in their best works will hold true with the average work.
Spend a lot of time looking at the high end artists work. I’ve looked at so much stuff now that I have to actually take a step back and view it as a whole.
Its far to easy to look at a tattoo and see rough shading, shaky lines, poor saturation, mismatched light sources, inconsistent line weight, proportion imbalance.
Once you know what good tattoos look like its easier to spot the mediocre and bad ones.
And remember…just cause you don’t like a style or particular piece doesn’t mean it isn’t well executed.
In this modern world it’s fairly easy to get an idea of their average work. Portfolios aren’t that big of a deal anymore as many artists post their daily work on instagram, facebook etc, or their clients do and tag them. Portfolios don’t necessarily consists of just their best work either, I know many artists put images in there that they think represent their style and what kind of tattoos they’d like to do more of. If they hate doing pin-ups, but have done some beautiful ones, the pin-ups probably won’t make it to the portfolio. I know some who discard amazing work just because they can’t stand the idea of doing another portrait. It varies a great deal!
But sure, with bad artists they’ll post a few pics of tattoos that actually turned out alright, and you’ll too late realize that those tattoos were a lucky shot. By looking for technique you can quite easily see what they’re actually capable of. It’s hard to fake an astounding ability to use color or shade properly. I got tattooed two days ago, and 3mins into the shading I could see this guy had whipshading down to a science, and linework was a piece of cake for this guy. He pulls longer, more complex lines in one go than anyone I’ve ever been tattooed by before. I couldn’t know this until I saw him execute it, though, but I looked at his work, thought that I’d beat myself up if I passed on the opportunity to be tattooed by him, and I booked an appointment. So that’s how I pick 😛
@poxphobia 138041 wrote:
By looking for technique you can quite easily see what they’re actually capable of.
Bingo!!!!!
@Titan-ium 138069 wrote:
That’s funny, no one on your list is in Arizona. That’s exactly my point. ha ha
Why limit yourself to one place for something that is going on you for life? I travel like 8000 miles every year for my tattoos:)
You have some of the most amazing artists in the world a short drive away!
@Titan-ium 138072 wrote:
There are a ton of top notch artists in California, I’d love to head out there to get some work done. I’m only 6 hours from Los Angeles.
Exactly!!!
@Titan-ium 138072 wrote:
There are a ton of top notch artists in California, I’d love to head out there to get some work done. I’m only 6 hours from Los Angeles.
Do it. I’ve travelled to California 4x now to get work done. From Canada. Way worth it.
I spend a lot of time looking at many different artist’s work – looking at new tattoos is the nest best thing to getting one 🙂 If I am going to get a new tattoo, I want to get the best I can in the style I like – it isn’t something I rush to decide. If I lived in the US though, I imagine I would travel quite large distances to get new pieces 🙂
Isn’t Justin Hartman based in Arizona?
@Titan-ium 138072 wrote:
I’m only 6 hours from Los Angeles.
For a great tattoo six hours isn’t asking much. Make a “road trip” out of it.
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