A good artist won’t have a problem with it, but you may need to compromise a little due to skin tone. Best bet is to take it in to him and he’ll tell you.

It’s really down to personal judgement, going from what others say can work out well, but alot of artists have hanger ons (people who get addicted and feel their artist is some god like person) and wouldn’t know a good piece if they saw one, so deciding wheather the word of mouth is useful or not will be entirely down to you knowing who is appreciating the work.
For the piece you are getting I’d be looking at an artists portait work, you find if they can do good portrait work they will be good at shading/fading and thinning out areas. If an artist is only showing lined stuff, tribal or only outlined stuff I’d stay away as these tend not to take so much skill and your fading could end up a bit of a mess.
If the artist is enthusiastic and your first impression is that he feels confident with it then you will be the best judge, if he looks at it and puffs and humms and hars then you may feel more comfortable moving on. Take your time, listen to what reputaion says, look at some photos of his work, if anyone he has tattooed is hanging out in the shop when you visit, try to check out what they have (new pieces they photo often look amazing straight after being done and then once healed you’ll find the ink didn’t go in properly or whatever (not always avoidable but good to check out as much as possible).
Have fun and enjoy the experience.

I don’t think your experience will make much difference to the tattoo, only your judgement of what is good work and bad work before making your mind up where to go. The amount of people that have said to me WOW this piece is excellent look at it, then to look and find that yes the design may be nice, but the work could have been a hell of alot better is unreal, but then lots of people are influenced by the hype of someone. This Kat Von D and Lou Malloy for example, people banging on about how great they are, ‘I want to be like Kat Von D’ etc is utter bollocks and I find it terribly sad of the individual. Yes they may have turned out some decent work but by no stretch of the imagination are they brilliant cutting edge artists or at least as good as people would have you believe, it’s all because of the hype around tattooing celebrities and getting on TV. Just look at some of the work they’ve turned out and you can see thier strong points and weak points.
The design will make very little difference although I’d take your skin tone into consideration, if you are looking at fading and tone change you will not get the definition you may want if you are a dark skinned person, if you are lilly white then you’ll probably get a good result.
I wouldn’t worry about the pain on the shoulder blade, it’s one of the nicer areas to get done, and no it will make no difference to the pain, the artists literally put a grey in now, although some old timers or crap younger artists may scratch you up to get effect, thats not needed these days, the inks are amazing.
Look at some websites, like tattooartist.org and BMEink.com have a trawl through some of the work and you will soon see and pick up what is possible and what is shit by comparing different work, and by god their is some shocking work on both of those sites, but also some excellent stuff. It’ll give you an idea of what you are comparing when you go to look at a local artists work.
Don’t be pressurised and take it at your own pace and you’ll be right!
Have fun and don’t be worried to ask questions, your artist is there to offer a service to you, you’re not doing him/her a favour nor the other way around, get the best you can and don’t settle for anything less.
🙂