Bored Panda got in touch with professional tattoo artist Mattia from Mambo Tattoo Shop and they were kind enough to answer some of our questions about tattoos and tattoo regret. Firstly, we wanted to hear about their personal experiences with covering up and changing unwanted tattoos. “I have had various experiences over the past 13 years of tattooing, some more serious and some less serious. The less serious regrets may be related to details concerning the tattoo, such as perhaps having chosen to do a tattoo in color but preferring it in black & white, or vice versa to keep it in black & white but wanting it colored at a later date.”

“The more serious ones, on the other hand, could be that the client did not make the right decision, i.e. he was not sure about the subject and got tattooed without thinking too much about it. Let's say, however, that I have never had a client regretting having chosen me as their tattoo artist,” they shared with Bored Panda.

“As for dealing with regret, you have to see to what extent you can change or modify the tattoo. You always have to understand well what it is that the client wants and in this sense dialogue is fundamental. On my side and the client's side, there may not be the same experience and knowledge of what we are talking about.”

In the end, like in so many parts of life, miscommunication is the main, underlying issue. “Maybe I take things for granted that the client does not know and he takes it for granted that I understand things that he may not have explained well. Dialogue is essential to arrive at a finished product and a tattoo that fits in with the client's requests and expectations.”

We also wanted to hear a tattoo artist’s perspective on what customers should research before picking who is actually going to ink them. “A person should first try to leave enough creative freedom to the tattoo artist and the proof is his portfolio of work. If out of 50 tattoos the client likes 45 of them, it means that the tattoo that will come out in the end will generally please the client.”

“So the advice is definitely to choose a tattoo artist on the basis of the work he does and the amount of work that meets the client's taste. You cannot like only 1 work out of 100, the more work you like, the higher the percentage of probability that the final work will satisfy you. The second piece of advice is to assess the type of subjects that tattoo artists do.”

“If out of 50 works a tattoo artist tattoos 30 flowers and 20 butterflies, then probably the best subject to ask for are flowers or butterflies, and so don't go asking for skulls or daggers because maybe that is not his kind. Basically, however, dialogue is always the key thing, you must not take anything for granted. One must ask questions and not be afraid to ask for things for fear of making a bad impression or being intrusive, but at the same time, one must also trust the tattoo artist and leave room for creativity.”

“The advice I would give to someone getting their first tattoo, but which applies in general to anyone who gets tattooed, is not to make hasty choices about the subject. If one has wanted to tattoo a rose for a long time, it means that this person imagines a rose on his or her body. If on the day of the appointment, he completely changes his mind and gets a snake tattoo, perhaps there and then out of emotion, haste, and anxiety he may say that he likes it anyway, but he hasn't had time to realize that he has a completely different tattoo to the one he had imagined.”

“This obviously depends a lot on one's character, but if you are not an extremely open-minded person you need the right amount of time to make decisions and so you should rather take some more time to think about the new option and possibly come back to the tattoo in a new session.”

“One thing I would like to add, as far as I am concerned, is to give great importance to the kindness and helpfulness of the tattoo artist and, consequently, the client on his part must also show kindness and serenity. Only in a serene and friendly atmosphere is it possible to complete a tattoo that, in addition to being aesthetically beautiful and centering on the points the client wanted, is also a beautiful memory of the session with the tattoo artist.”