Your First Tattoo, Without the Regret
Almost nobody regrets the design. They regret making it too small, or putting it in the wrong place.
Size: almost always bigger
Mistake number one is cramming detail into too little space. Ink spreads over the years, and what today is four tight lines becomes one smudge in ten. A portrait needs ten centimetres minimum, a shaded flower about eight. If the design forces you to shrink it, change the design, not the size.
Placement: think twenty years ahead
Forearm, upper arm, calf and thigh age well: little friction, little sun if you cover up, stable skin. Hands, fingers and feet drop ink and need touching up every few years — we tell you that before we start, not after. If you work with the public, the inner forearm hides under a sleeve and the shoulder never shows at all.
Style decides how it ages
Micro fine line looks beautiful for the first year and asks for a touch-up sooner than anything else; if you want it, go slightly bigger than feels natural. Blackwork, black-and-grey realism and dotwork hold for decades. Colour holds too, as long as you keep it out of the sun. Elia does fine line, mandalas, dotwork and watercolour; Asgar does black-and-grey realism, cover-ups, blackwork and tribal.
Come in and we will talk it through
No appointment and no finished idea required. Bring a reference, or just a rough thought. We draw it, place it on your skin with a marker and you check it in the mirror before deciding anything. We are at Sant Pere 46, open seven days, 10:30 to 13:30 and 16:30 to 20:30. We speak Spanish, English and German.