Your Consultation

Local or traveling — which consultation applies to you?

The consultation process looks different depending on where you're coming from. Local clients come in for an in-person meeting. Clients traveling in from out of town go through a two-step remote process — photos first, then a phone call. Both paths cover the same ground. The work that follows is the same.

A consultation is a conversation

The consultation at my studio is not a sales pitch and it's not a formality. It's the beginning of a real working relationship — a conversation about what you want on your body, why you want it, what it means to you, and whether the kind of work I do is the right fit for the idea you're bringing in.

Not every client arrives with a fully formed idea. Most don't. What I need to know is: which part of the body, roughly what scale, and what subject or direction you're drawn toward. The rest of that conversation is what the consultation is for. You don't need to walk in with answers. Showing up with honest questions and an open mind is often more valuable than arriving with a reference folder and a fixed plan.

Private rooms — your comfort in the room

Consultations and sessions both happen in private spaces. This is not an open-plan shop where your appointment is discussed in earshot of other clients, other artists, or anyone passing through. What we talk about in the consultation stays in the room. What happens during your session stays between us.

For tattoos that require showing skin — a piece on the chest, the ribcage, the hip, the upper thigh, the back — the private room matters. You will never need to expose yourself in a common area or feel like you're in a clinical setting with strangers moving around you. The room is quiet, controlled, and comfortable.

For areas that require removing clothing, the studio provides:

• Pasties — for chest and breast coverage when tattooing around or near those areas
• Kimonos — lightweight wrap garments that let me access the area being tattooed while keeping the rest of your body covered

These aren't afterthoughts — they're part of how I run a professional studio. You will never be asked to remove more than necessary, and you will never feel uncomfortable in the room.

How to show the area

For local clients — in person. For traveling clients — via your advance photos. See the photo guide →

One of the most important things we do in a consultation is look at the actual body real estate where the tattoo will live. The shape of your shoulder, the curve of your ribcage, the length and proportion of your forearm — these things directly affect the design. A piece that works beautifully on someone else's arm may not work the same way on yours. Every body is different, and every design should be built for the body wearing it.

Before you come in, think about what you might wear to make showing the area easy. You don't need to come up with a solution — the studio has cover options for every situation — but wearing something that gives reasonable access to the general area makes the consultation more efficient. If your piece is going on your back, a button-down shirt you can open is better than a pullover. If it's on your upper leg, shorts are easier than jeans.

If you're genuinely uncertain what to wear or how to show the area, just ask in your booking message. It's a common question and it has a simple answer for every situation.

What to bring

Bring anything that helps communicate the direction you're thinking — reference images, screenshots, photos of work you admire, even drawings or sketches of your own. These don't need to be polished or final. They're starting points for a conversation, not proposals for me to copy.

What's more useful than a perfect reference image is being able to articulate what appeals to you about it — whether that's the scale, the energy, a specific color, a subject, a mood. Understanding what draws you to something helps me build something original that captures the same thing, rather than producing a copy of someone else's work.

How the design process works

I do not draw in front of you during the consultation and pressure you to approve something on the spot. The consultation is for gathering information. The design happens after you leave.

After we've talked through your project, I'll draw the piece specifically for you — sized for your body, shaped around your specific placement, in the style and composition we discussed. You'll see the design before anything goes on your skin. If adjustments are needed, we make them. The goal is for you to walk into the first session genuinely excited about what's about to happen, not vaguely hopeful.

This approach takes more time than pulling a pre-made design from a book and adjusting the size. That's the point. Custom work that's built for your body and your story is better work. It heals better, reads better from across the room, and means more to you in ten years than anything generic ever could.

What happens after the consultation

Once we've had the consultation and you've decided to move forward, we'll set the appointment schedule. For larger pieces — sleeves, back pieces, large multi-session work — I'll outline how many sessions we're likely looking at and what each session will cover. For smaller single-session pieces, we'll book the one appointment and that's the plan.

Between the consultation and your first session, I'm working on the design. You're preparing your body. Read the session prep guide — it covers everything you need to do in the days before your appointment to give your skin and your nervous system the best possible starting point.