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caduceusandwater · 8 years ago

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Halfway there - or how to choose a better tattoo artist next time

A few months ago, I asked around for recommendations for artists, and was pointed towards Nastia Zlotin, who currently works out of Signs and Wonders in Berlin. Her tattoos were so bold and colourful, the shapes so exquisite - I was really excited, and got in touch soon after to ask if she'd be interested in working with me on a project I'd had in mind for many years: two snakes draped over my shoulders.

She seemed a bit confused by the premise at first, but once I explained more she said she was interested. She gave me a date for an appointment, and asked me to come in the day before for a consultation. I was on a break from work at the time, so this was perfect. She also asked me to pay a deposit, and suggested PayPal, or cash in hand during the consultation. I said I would bring cash.

I got to the store on time for the consultation that Tuesday. The appointment was for the next day. There was a brothel right next door, but this is Berlin, so it's fairly normal I guess, and you don't get to pick your location. The studio itself was a bit strange. I'm used to tattoo studios being a riot of colours, or sometimes lavishly decorated, but Signs and Wonders is very dark and kind of drab, everything is painted dark grey. Inside the studio there were a lot of semi-identical Berlin-style tough guys, who were evidently the other artists and some of their clients. They were horsing around really loudly.

Nastia eventually turned up, somewhat late. We sat and discussed the tattoo, and it seemed we'd come to an understanding - I wanted the two snakes to be more naturalistic, like much of her works, but she recommended a blend of this with her signature triangles style, which sounded pretty cool. She asked me to show her my shoulders, where the tattoo was going to be, and congratulated me on how pale I was "Because you'll make a great canvas, haha". Slightly creepy but ok.

I came back he next day, and was asked to wait while Nastia finished up the design. I waited about 40 minutes to an hour for this. Eventually she called me in to do the stencilling and placement. It was at this stage that I saw the design. The general shape she chose was awesome, bold and swirling. I was a little shcked to see she'd coloured the snake heads entirely in black, however, with a strange design that was supposed to be reminiscent of snake scales but looked unfortunately close to, well, testicles. She told me the snake's eyes were going to be red. She also chose to give the snakes a very strange perspective, which made them look like 2-dimensional ribbons rather than cylinders. Snakes do now show their bellies when they curve around obstacles, but these snakes did. I figured she'd chosen this for artistic effect reasons, and she also made it clear she wanted to hurry up and get this done, and was not keen on discussing the design. At no point did she ask me if there any changes I wanted to make, it was up to me to interrupt her to ask for changes.

I reminded myself that I loved all her other work, and that she knew what she was doing, and perhaps she'd taken that design from a particular type of snake (although I specified I had green grass snakes in mind, who do not have this type of design on their heads). She told me in a flustered way that she had stayed up very late learning how to draw snakes, and she now had a cold, so she was going to wear a face mask for this session. I felt bad for making her stay up, but figured it was her business to decide, since she could easily have postponed the appointment.

Placement took a while and was expertly done, I really appreciated that she had an eye for symmetry. Her husband, who is also a tattoo artist, came over every so often to comment and suggest improvements. Since the design was on my shoulders, I had to have my top pulled down quite far, so I was pretty cold by the time the stencil was on, about an hour later.

I asked her if we could discuss the colours for a minute before we started, and she agreed. At this point the design had no colours in it save for the heads beng entirely black,which looked really odd - it was as if the artist had made a mistake in that area and tried to cover it. It also looked more like the cover of a heavy metal album than the whimsical, colourful animals in her portfolio.

I told her I did not want any black in that area, she said it was for contrast. Given my skin is very pale in that area, this didn't make sense to me - any colour would contrast in this area, even pale grey. I clearly said that I did not want any black on the heads, since they were the first thing people would see. I suggested using dark green or dark purple instead. She agreed purple would work, and I felt reassured.

The first sessions went well, and we managed to finish the outline in that time, which looked fabulous. At several points throughout though, the guys in the studio came over to stare at my other modifications (I have several scarification pieces), which felt quite intimidating since I was lying down and had my top pulled quite far down, they were standing, and I was trapped and could not move, or protest without making a fuss. Late in the afternoon as they were leaving, one of the guys made a joke about how "you can tattoo her naked now we're leaving, hur hur" which made me feel pretty uncomfortable.

The colouring session was booked for a month in the future. I was super excited, because I had seen so much of her work, loved it all, and felt that it would be nothing short of awesome.

When I got there and we'd prepped, she showed me a colour pallette on her phone that had warm greens, and khakis, which I okayed. These were to be the colours for the back. For the front, I reiterated that I wanted purple, and she agreed once more. I brought up the eye colour, and again she suggested red. It still confuses me why she wanted to take these beautiful snakes, and give them black heads with red eyes - I came to see her for her gorgeous use of bright colours, and not to have demon snakes tattooed on me. We discussed this and agreed that yellow or orange eyes would be good.

This session was pretty gruelling - long, and painful. I am pretty good at handling pain over several hours, I did feel pretty spacey after a while though, from the endorphins. Not dizzy or unwell though, so we figured it was fine to carry on. Nastia seemed very intent on finishing the piece that day, even though the rate of progress was slow, and made slower by the fact she works colour in layers in some areas, rather than pre-mixing the shae she's after. I would have been pretty happy to quit after the back was done, but she said she really wanted to try and finish today, and I seemed to be doing ok.

So I put my headphones back in to block out the screechy metal that was playing, lay back down on the table, and tried to relax and get through this. At one point towards the end, I was getting pretty uncomfortable since we were about 5 hours in, and I was feeling the pain more. I asked for a break, but she told me she wanted to finish the front, and it would be 20 more minutes. I was pretty shocked she wouldn't let me up for a 3 minute break, since, well... I was the one feeling the pain, and I think this showed in my face, since she okayed the break after that.

She finished the left side of the front in a hurry, at that point it was clear she just wanted to get this over and done with and me out of the door. Once she'd cleaned me up, I got to go and look at the tattoo, and was immediately perplexed, because the colours looked extremely dark and muddy, and poorly matched. She told me that the colours would brighten over the next few days as they healed. I was exhausted from 5 hours of pain, so I hoped for the best, handed over a wad of cash, and left.

Over the next couple of days it became very clear that the colours were not going to fade or brighten, and that they were actually very mistmatched. The back of the tattoo looks very coherent and well thought through, the front looks like she was wearing coloured glasses when doing it. I was very shocked and dismayed by this, and even more when I saw that on the snake's head, there was a huge chunk of solid, pure black. The snake looked weird compared with its linework twin, the latter so graceful and full of life, the "finished" snake looked like a bad colouring book accident. And I knew there would be no way to tattoo over that black. Where I had hoped for shades of green and purple, she put in solid black, faded neon yellow, rusty burgundy, some small bits of purple, and dark grey.

I emailed her a couple of days later, asking if she intended to rework the colours, and stating politely that I was very disappointed she used black, and after I specifically asked her not to. She replied and told me that the black was "always supposed to be there", and that the colours were done, and if they looked flat "that's just the style". I had hoped she would offer to go over them again to make them more coherant, so this was a blow. I remembered how we clearly discussed the colours, and how I asked for purple, and no black. And how she had gone right ahead and made a decision for me, explicitly against my consent. I remembered how she had told me I couldn't stop to take a break because she wanted to finish. I thought about her defensive words in the email after I expressed doubts, and I realised I did not want to give her another chance to make this tattoo even worse.

I sent her an email asking if she's be willing to refund my deposit, since I would not be going back for a final appointment, and the money equivalent to the time she spent on the front of the tattoo, the part which made no sense. She refused and asked me to come in for a consultation. Given she had still not acknowledged that she had done anything wrong, it was clear that there was no point going in for a consultation during which she would just tell me repeatedly that there was no problem, and ask me to entrust my skin to her once again.

Looking back, I wonder why she couldn't have sketeched out the colours in advance, like she did for the back? This would have cut out the risk factor, and made everyone happy. She seemed so rushed all the time, I figured she just hadn't had time, and I decided the right thing to do was trust her.

In retrospect, I wish that I had pushed for her to draw a colour pallette in advance for the front, like she did for the back - she made no space for my input at any point though, and met my comments with resistance and impatience. And her other tattoos looked so good, I figured she knew what she was doing. Looking back, these are huge red flags. All the tattoo artists I've worked with up until now actually invited comments and feedback on every aspect of the tattoo, and as a result I am extremely happy with all of my work. It was a collaboration, where I was a participant. With Nastia it felt more like I was an unusually noisy canvas with a wallet, and she just wished I would shut up and be painted quietly.

I explained this, and she agreed to refund the money. At this point I was scared to go to the studio alone, since she'd been so aggressive and defensive in her emails, and in any case it was not an option: this month is an extremely busy time at work, and I cannot take time off without negative consequences. I offered her the choice of PayPalling me the money, which should be fine since she originally asked me to pay the deposit that way, or to have my husband come by to pick it up, since he gets off earlier than me. She had met him in person before, and I was willing to provide identification documents and a signed letter receipt if asked.

She refused and insisted again I come to the studio, having still not admitted to any responsibility for tattooing the wrong colours on me. At this point it was clear that she had no intention of giving me the money back, and that she was using it to lure me to the studio, where she could intimidate me into god knows what. I thought about explaining to my manager that I needed to take time off work to go and stand in a dark studio with 5 large guys standing around so Nastia could tell me to my face that she thought I was crazy, and decided enough was enough.

I posted several reviews for her work online, stating what had happened. I did this in the hopes that it might help someone else to avoid this same painful situation. Being stuck with a tattoo you did not ask for, when the artist tells you it's your problem, and which will need a lot of repairing... Is a very horrible feeling whcih I wish on no-one.

Nastia subsequently sent friends to insult me on my Facebook page, and posted carefully chosen screenshots of our email exchange, which showed my PayPal details and email address clearly. Given this behaviour, I am very glad I never took the risk of going to the shop, and it's even clearer that she never intended to give the money back, but was willing to resort to anything to intimidate me.

Please choose your artists carefully, and if they dismiss you at any point, RUN! At the end of the day it's your body, and you are the one who will wear this tattoo for a lifetime.

#tattoo #red flags #nastia zlotin

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