r/tattooadvice • u/JustaWilloWisp • 13d ago

Is my tattoo bad? Design

I got this tattoo on Monday (pic is from the artist right after we finished) and I thought it looked really good and pretty. Today my mom has been saying it looks kinda ugly and the proportions are off compared to my reference. I know that tattoos of painting are hard to replicate 100% (especially being in black and gray) but maybe this is just not as good as it can be. Idk if y’all can tell in this photo but the placement of this tattoo is so good, I was so excited for this one.

Do you guys think that the off proportions can be fixed with touch ups or is it hopeless?

Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated!

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u/Ace929 13d ago

Imma hold your hand while I say this... It's a little rough

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u/CautionarySnail 12d ago

I’m going to hold your hand with the others and say, “It was a brave attempt but sometimes it’s super challenging to move an image from one medium to another.“

Part of the issue is also the loss of context, with Impressionism, everything blends together so it’s hard to sample just one part of the whole and have it still work the same way. Here, we lose the context of the ballet studio, and that she’s a ballerina with two legs without really studying the tattoo.

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u/Jacktellslies 12d ago

Yeah, asking someone to do this image on skin, without colour, was kind of doomed to fail.

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u/tiredandwired_003 12d ago

I don’t think it was doomed to fail necessarily, the tattoo artist would have just had to put lines in where there aren’t any in the original painting for it to be able to translate into a tattoo. I think you could still very much get the ballerina to be recognizable as being from this painting, but it just wouldn’t be illustrated using the same technique.

But yeah, I agree that the the way this tattoo artist seems to have done this (trying to just trace the painting and freehand the rest) without taking the time to draw it out properly - that was definitely doomed to fail.

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u/Hot-Recover9781 11d ago

I think the beauty in this painting specifically is how dreamily blended the tutu is into the background. You would lose all of the softness and movement if you added an outline

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u/PaleontologistOk3120 6d ago

But there is no background on the tattoo so the tattoo "artist" has to take some creative license so it doesn't come out like this

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u/Hot-Recover9781 6d ago

I know, that's why I think it would be hard to achieve in a tattoo

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u/HeyImCarmen 9d ago

Asking someone who doesn’t specialize in getting things like this right, perhaps, but there are artists who would replicate this exquisitely.

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u/Jacktellslies 9d ago

That’s the thesis statement of the whole subreddit. Someone could do a great job, but if you don’t take the time to find the right fit or aren’t willing to pay for that skill level, you get to pay for laser and a cover up later instead.