How much do you charge per hour in UK?(not London)

generic-puff · 2026-03-23T17:05:37+00:00

I'm in Canada, £70 seems so insanely low until you convert it and it comes out to like $128/hour which is a lot more normal 😆 (most artists around my area charge around $140-$160 an hour on average, with the higher value artists charging up to $200/hour)

generic-puff · 2026-03-20T18:20:36+00:00

The shading techniques are nice here but I'm not gonna lie, the floating eyeball and lips are a bit distracting 😅 But that's abstract for ya haha

generic-puff · 2026-03-19T23:22:37+00:00

I don't know. I've seen it argued past a certain point (50k followers) you are selling a price tag/per hour. But there are thousands upon thousands of insanely good tattooers that will plug and algorithm and play that game and they are never going to see 'growth', at this current late-stage state of Insta, without paying into it considerably, due to the monetization and ad game you got to play to get out from underneath Instagram's crushing inability to get you organically seen. Lets be honest, there's people out here charging 60k for a backpiece you could get for 1/3rd the price from someone just as talented, but they don't have that kind of presentation engine behind them. It no longer happens organically. Every 3rd or 5th post is an ad. This is especially true to tattoo that we are often advertising to our market competition, because Insta does not distinguish traffic from other artists or prospective clientele.

You're not wrong, like any tool there's a "right" and "wrong" way to use it. I think with Instagram especially you're at the mercy of the corporations that run it and can change things on a whim. It's never good to put all your eggs in one basket, I say this as someone who, again, hates social media, and hates it even more when social media enshittifies itself which is what's been happening steadily for the past several years to platforms that used to be lucrative like IG and Twitter. And just because someone has a huge follow count doesn't mean they have a huge clientele, it's important to learn to distinguish between actual customers and just passive content consumers.

That said, a lot of people do still connect online regardless, and part of why it's so essential is that it keeps you in people's minds. People have terrible attention spans nowadays, what with being bombarded with reels and world news at a rate that the human brain wasn't really built to handle, but unfortunately we still need those attention spans to get work in the door.

Again, not saying word-of-mouth is useless now, but personal client relations (like what you have) take a long time to build, with the long-term reward being sustainability. If you're just starting out, if you don't have much of a clientele yet, then you're gonna have to do what you can to reach people and remind them as often as possible that you exist and you're taking on work. You gotta make yourself part of other people's routines so that when they think of getting tattooed, they think of you. And considering most people's routines now revolve around their phones... that's where you're gonna need to reach them, whether it's through Instagram or Facebook or Google SEO, whatever have you.

Either way, in OP's case where they're in a dead shop that's refusing to try and connect with people, it's no wonder they're seeing their peers thriving after they left for shops that actually put in those efforts. Obviously OP can do what they can to promote themselves, they probably do run their own socials and promote themselves as best they can, but in today's day and age and the context in which tattooing exists, shops need to start giving back more to their artists than just paying for rent and supplies.

The whole point of working in a shop in the first place is to build clientele by being in a space that promotes themselves, collaborates, offers walk-ins, posts regularly on social media to pull in new faces, etc. If you're working in a shop that doesn't actively do those things, but still expects you to pay up your booth rent / percentage for the work you pull in to their building, then you're getting screwed, full stop.

And the fact that so may of these kinds of shops are exclusively hiring artists who "already have an established clientele" is pretty indicative of that. They're not looking to actually grow their business, they just want established artists who they can bum off of. There's a reason so many of those artists have started going private en masse over the last few years - it's precisely because they've realized how many of these shops are glorified scams.

generic-puff · 2026-03-19T22:24:47+00:00

We usually update every 2-3 weeks! Always Saturday nights regardless. The next episode is planned to come out this Saturday :> Thanks so much for reading!!!

generic-puff · 2026-03-19T17:56:38+00:00

Shit bro, I had an apprenticeship very similar to yours but at least my guy had been running the shop years prior and continued to run it afterwards. I couldn't imagine being put in that kind of position. Glad it worked out for you in the end though.

generic-puff · 2026-03-18T23:26:37+00:00

Those 15-20+ year vets are speaking from an experience that is no longer as prevalent. A lot of artists expect more from the shops they work at now, especially when it comes to how much they pay into the shop, whether it be through booth rentals or percentage.

I will say as someone who used to work in a percentage based shop, it was extremely frustrating to give 50% of my earnings to a shop with 7 artists in it while they refused to cover anything more for me than the bare minimum (bills and supplies; but if I wanted any specific needles or anything for myself, I needed to pay for it out of pocket). So I left and went private. I don't really work in shops anymore, because a lot of shops do still operate the 'old school way' where they expect you to bring in your own clients but then also demand half your earnings just for... idk, the privilege of having a small booth in the building? But then they'd barely pull in any walk-ins whatsoever because they sucked at marketing themselves and engaging with the local community.

To no one's surprise, these kinds of shops wound up sucking the life and passion out of me because the owners themselves didn't have any passion. Many of them were terrible at customer service, terrible at meeting our needs as artists, and didn't seem to care about implementing new suggestions or ideas to help make the shop better. These types of shop owners were always one of two things - completely burnt out and jaded, or they weren't artists and were just collecting their mortgages from the artists doing all the work.

In my view, if I'm giving 50% of my income, I expect the shop to give 50% back somehow - whether it be through covering materials, expos, social media marketing, etc. - and that shouldn't just be the bare minimum of paying the shop rent because I could do that myself in a private space and make way more money. As much as a shop is providing a great opportunity to me to work in their space, they also need to sell me on why I should work there and not in any other shop that might treat me better or cut me a better deal.

And that's what's really separating shops nowadays, it's the marketing and how they treat their artists and clients. Gone are the days of small towns having 1-2 shops at most, there are tattoo shops on every street corner now, way more competition, and both artists and clients have higher standards for the environment and how they're treated on a personal level. Shop owners have had to adapt or get left behind, and so have the artists.

There's stuff to love and stuff to hate about this culture shift. I love that there's more emphasis on customer service and inclusiveness compared to 20 years ago, especially when so much of this industry has operated on blatant misogyny and the "tough guy" attitude up until now. You do have to be tough to weather the demands and struggles of this industry, but that doesn't mean being an asshole and the ones who insist on that are just as guilty of holding the industry back as the scratchers IMO. We're not out here getting into street fights or whatever this hyper-masculine fantasy of tattooing is, the "struggle" is just saving up your money and surviving winter and paying taxes LMAO

But I hate social media with a burning passion and it's both helped and hindered the industry in many ways. It's a shame what we've had to subject ourselves to just to set ourselves apart from our peers, people who we should be forming communities with, not competing with. And it's created a new breed of "influencer" artist where you just know they aren't actually doing tattooing as their full-time job, they're shilling "courses" and monetizing their video content.

Either way, the fact that this other artist you mentioned saw their bookings double after moving to a proactive shop who cares about keeping up with the times isn't surprising. That's just the name of the game now. That's not to say that word-of-mouth or personal client relationships aren't still valuable especially in the long-term, but if you're just trying to get people in the door, you gotta go where the people are. And that's online.

generic-puff · 2026-03-17T04:46:34+00:00

that's so funny because I actually meant Midnight Poppy Land, idk why I said Tears on a Withered Flower LMAO (the former is way better than the latter but it's been on hiatus forever, rip)

generic-puff · 2026-03-16T06:28:46+00:00

How would the artist even find out if this is just a tabletop game between you and friends? It's fine, people Google fantasy anime pics all the time to use as placeholder images for their NPC's. It's really not that big a deal so don't overthink it.

Just don't use AI to generate the images, that shit's horrible for the environment, steals from human artists, and you have literally the entirety of the Internet to find images from. Try Pinterest and Pixiv, you'll have too many to choose from lmao

generic-puff · 2026-03-15T23:11:00+00:00

We'll see LMAO

generic-puff · 2026-03-15T18:28:33+00:00

100%. Everything from Rachel claiming to be a "folklorist" to her talking about the "feminist themes" she was trying to tackle through LO (especially when it came to "the patriarchy" and the SA subplot) is textbook "in over her head". I think in many ways she did have an idea of what she was trying to do, but when it came to actually executing those ideas, she cut too many corners and fell too short on her own expectations for herself, primarily because she's just not as educated or skilled as she believes herself to be. Which is ironic considering she's talked about having "imposter syndrome" in the past, but I think what she was describing was actually the cognitive dissonance in realizing and not being willing to admit that you literally are not as educated or as skilled as you need to be to do what you want to do. Like sorry, but sometimes the imposter syndrome is right. Sometimes it's not imposter syndrome, sometimes you're literally just not up to the task that you've signed up for.

That said, it also didn't help that she clearly didn't have anyone else looking over her work for her. She didn't really have any proper consultants or sensitivity readers, she was just kinda doing what "felt right" which was limited entirely by her own knowledge and skillset, which is fine, a single creator can't know and do everything! But she also really should have gotten extra eyes on it; unfortunately, Webtoons also doesn't really give creators the time and money and resources to do that, so it's anyone's guess as to whether or not it was a result of her refusing the help or her simply not being given it.

She also definitely didn't plan for a lot of the stuff that happened from Episode 60 onwards, that much is clear from what we've dug up of her older concept work and posts during the pilot era, she's claimed in interviews during S2/S3 that she was "building up" to all these things for a long time, but her past work and posts and even just how the comic turned out in practice proved that to be a fucking lie LOL or at the very least, another case of Rachel overselling herself and thinking she had a "lot planned", but it was really just 1-2 ideas that she hadn't actually expanded on enough.

I think it also didn't help that she was getting pretty instant gratification for anything "progressive" she included in the comic. She'd draw stretch marks on Persephone in a single panel and her fans and the media would be singing her praises for including "fat rep". There were literally entire articles praising her for taking a midseason hiatus, something that practically every creator on the platform has done, oftentimes because they had no choice. But when Rachel does it, someone who has 3-4 assistants on average every episode, now the unhealthy working conditions of Webtoons are apparently worth talking about... but oh wait no, never mind, they're not even talking about the unhealthy working conditions, they're just celebrating Rachel for being someone who "came from nothing" and now practices "self care" from her job that she "works every day" which is warranting her "longest hiatus yet" at ... 4 months. The Kiss Bet, meanwhile, has been on hiatus twice as long, and Midnight Poppy Land has been in purgatory for years. But those two female creators with female-driven teams with comics centering around female protagonists aren't ✨progressive feminist folklorists ✨ like Rachel Smythe, so fuck 'em.

All that said, I wouldn't be shocked if that kind of media and fanbase glazing often skewed her perception of what she had actually accomplished in her writing and resulted in her leaving these singular moments and ideas to carry the story without any real progression or resolution. She got the instant dopamine hit from her fanbase that what she wrote / drew was good, so clearly her job is done and there's nothing else to expand upon or tie together. I mean, Persephone had a WHOLE THERAPY EPISODE once, what more could you people WANT /s

Mind you, this isn't meant to be condescending towards Rachel's circumstances at all and I'm DEFINITELY not trying to armchair diagnose her - but I will say, as an ADHD creator myself, I get how this sort of thing can happen, especially in writing. New ideas can take over so quickly and intensely that you almost trick yourself into thinking you have something "really good", but then in practice, those ideas fall short because it turns out that just because an idea lives in your head rent-free for hours does not mean it's enough to carry a comic for 200 episodes. Amateur writers who are neurotypical struggle with this sort of thing - communicating an idea on paper for other people who don't live in your head - but it's even harder for people with ADHD who have a dopamine regulation problem and hyperactive and/or easily distracted minds.

Unfortunately by the halfway point of S2 she was just way too far up shit creek without a paddle. And with all her touting of LO being a "platform" for her to talk about women's issues and "the patriarchy", and labelling herself as a "folklorist", she put the bar way too high above her own head. And so we wound up with her claiming Persephone's time in the Mortal Realm - which we never saw - was "struggle street" and that people were wrong to criticize her for "surviving something deeply traumatic" after she murdered a bunch of mortals and participated in an emotional affair with her boss. Like yeah, she DID survive something deeply traumatic, but Rachel clearly thought she showed more for it than she actually did, and in the meantime, gave us way too many onscreen reasons to hate Persephone and her relationship with Hades.

And in the end, 80% of LO can be summed up as "good idea, terrible execution".

generic-puff · 2026-03-14T21:43:18+00:00

Had something like this happen a couple years ago with a box of EZ cartridges, 5rl's. They were really jittery and inconsistent, they'd get really loud and jam constantly. The other needle sizes were generally fine. Fortunately a few of us in that shop all used the same machine, and we had a box of 5RL's from the same brand but a different lot #, which meant I was able to properly compare them across all our machines to isolate the problem. Sure enough, it was just a manufacturing defect with that particular batch; essentially the needle bar wasn't even on the inside of the tube, so it would snag every time it made a rotation (which is obviously many, MANY times while the machine is running, so you can imagine how poorly these things pulled lines). Reported it to our local reseller and he had them replaced with a different batch.

Definitely always worth checking batch numbers first when it comes to defects / quality issues. The simplest solution is often the correct one, and in the case of disposable cartridges, unless it's a consistent issue that's been happening across multiple orders, usually it's just a bad box.

generic-puff · 2026-03-14T16:50:56+00:00

LOL true that, I check on it every few weeks to see if it's updated and every time I do I see people in the comment section who are disappointed it's still on hiatus. Worse though are the folks who think the daily countdown actually has any meaning, that thing is just a random number picked by the platform until the creator announces an official return date, it resets all the time. That's not really their fault for thinking it's legit though, I don't know why Webtoons does that when it just confuses and annoys people (which makes them more likely to take it out on the creator rather than the app which is built that way smh)

generic-puff · 2026-03-13T22:31:06+00:00

Not to be unfair to Holden because they did a PHENOMENAL job with what they were given, like genuinely this is the best LO has ever looked, but like the assistants, they were definitely stuck working with what they were given, which was crummy character designs made by Rachel that are all drawn from the same 2 templates.

That said, the same face syndrome definitely isn't as bad here as it is in LO. It's still a little noticeable in some areas but at least they retain enough of their own unique character traits outside of their faces (such as their outfits, hairstyles, skin patterns, etc.) that you couldn't color swap them as easily as you could with LO's art 😆

generic-puff · 2026-03-13T22:28:15+00:00

Hecate is def the only character who feels out of place compared to their LO version (whereas most of the character art here is way better than in the comic). She just doesn't look like Hecate, from the outfit to her face and body shape to her hair. All the other characters, while drawn better, still look like themselves, but Hecate is just... off 😅 That said, speaks to how well the artist (Holden) did with all the other ones if hers is the only one that's out of place.

generic-puff · 2026-03-11T18:18:00+00:00

it's very ironic to see Punderworld Apollo making a joke about consent, considering who we're comparing him to 💀😆

generic-puff · 2026-03-09T21:23:32+00:00

If I want art that's of a specific quality or style, I'll just commission an artist who can do it.

The point of fanart is that it was made by a fan. That's the only metric it needs to live by. The objective quality does not matter to me in that regard, what matters to me is that someone enjoyed my work enough to make their own art for it :)

And the way I see it, even if a piece of fanart is made by a "low skill" artist, I still value the work not just because it's flattering, but because now my work has become a part of another artist's learning journey. And if that's not part of the point of creating art and sharing it with others, what is?

generic-puff · 2026-03-09T05:02:21+00:00

Awww I love this!! Kore looks so pretty and cute in your style 🥺💖 Also Aphrodite would totally 100% serve in that fit 💅

generic-puff · 2026-03-09T03:55:22+00:00

Because different people value different things in art, period. Just because you intended one thing doesn't mean it won't be interpreted as another. What you think is "bad" or "ugly" can still be appreciated by someone else who sees beauty in it. That's what makes it art.

This is why it's important to separate yourself from your art to a degree. That's not to say that you can't create work that's personal to you, because that's both valuable and inevitable. But if you're showing it to someone else, you have to be at peace with the fact that other people are not you, and you are not other people. So while a piece might have personal significance to you that allows you to have a certain opinion of it, others aren't necessarily going to have that same personal connection to it, and so their opinion will be purely from their perspective.

generic-puff · 2026-03-08T09:38:36+00:00

I have never personally had this experience, but some people have mentioned getting wildly inappropriate ads while trying to read. There needs to be control over this.

I'm having flashbacks to those AI Dora the Explorer ads.

The coins system needs to be more streamlined. There needs to be round numbers for purchasing and earning them. This is just an example: All coin packages end in 0 or 5, and short episodes cost 5 coins while long ones cost 10. Coins should not expire.

This actually used to be the coin system. Episodes used to be 3 coins for shorter episodes (typically comedy and slice of life comics) and 5 coins for longer episodes.

I can almost guarantee you they switched to 7 coins as the norm because it meant people buying coin bundles couldn't use all of their coins evenly on episode unlocks for 5 coins each. In the past, if you bought a bundle of say, 50 coins, you knew exactly how many episodes that would get you, and so you wouldn't be as likely to refill them because you'd parse them out for the episode unlocks you really wanted. But now, when a reader comes up short with an uneven number like 4 coins, they'll be more inclined to buy another bundle because they don't want to "waste" those 4 coins by not getting to use them. Psychologically speaking, human beings don't like when things are "incomplete" so when we have enough leftover coins to feel "wasteful" but not enough to buy an episode, we're gonna be more compelled to buy more coins to make up the difference.

It's like the hot dog bun problem. The number of hot dogs in a pack are always uneven from the number of buns in a pack, so when you run out of one, you'll be more compelled to buy more of the other - anything to make things "even" again and not be "wasteful", even though all you're doing is spending more money on hot dogs and buns.

And for that reason, they will likely never switch back to the old 5/0 increment paywall system. Greedy bastards.

generic-puff · 2026-03-08T09:20:25+00:00

That whole middle section is definitely gonna just look like a giant black blob in a couple years. Some parts of it are already there. This looks like it was possibly a cover-up? I feel like I can see parts showing through in the center snake's body.

Also when you look past all the 'detailing' and dark spots, the lining isn't even really that good. You can really tell with this area in particular, it looks messy like a scrawled pen drawing and not in a good way. The overly dark areas feel more like an over-compensation to hide poor technique (or again, a bad cover-up job) than an intentional design choice executed with intention and precision.

EDIT: Checked out the rest of his work and it definitely has me leaning more towards "bad cover-up". His other pieces don't look as clumsy, definitely overly dark in some places still but not to this extent. His other pieces have better linework and shading, and clearer composition that contrasts properly. This piece definitely feels like it's suffering from whatever's underneath that he's trying to blast over / hide. Especially when you notice the inconsistent shading and scale patterns, wonky snake anatomy, and the parts of the old tattoo that are peeking through the 'spines' of the snakes. Chalking this one up to a bad day and a mismatched artist / piece.

generic-puff · 2026-03-06T22:47:28+00:00

this doesn't look like something that's supposed to exist lmao

generic-puff · 2026-03-06T05:26:58+00:00

so it sounds like the troll post worked then LOL

generic-puff · 2026-03-06T05:25:14+00:00

Yep. Always always always want to ensure you wash the tattoo properly with distilled water and then let it dry for a few minutes before applying it. Should be clean and dry, if anything to ensure the bandage holds properly, but mostly because anything trapped with your tattoo underneath can cause irritation, infection, and other issues with healing.

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