A couple months ago I had my first sitting for large colour tattoo on my upper thigh (original quote was for 10 hours though it’s looking like it will be more than that). Unfortunately, my body didn’t like one of the inks used. Everything healed perfectly except for the spots where this one shade of green went in… probably about 45 minutes of work lost because it was an important part of the piece!

The affected spots cracked and hurt really badly for a couple weeks. Once everything healed I was left with some light scarring and absolutely no colour in the places where that shade of green had gone in. I visited the artist and she told me we won’t use that type of ink at my next sitting. I also postponed our next session to allow more time for the scarred area to heal.

My question is, in terms of etiquette, who should be paying for the touch up work my artist will have to do? It’s obviously not her fault that my skin didn’t like the ink, so I can understand why she may want me to pay for the extra work. But I paid for a service that, for reasons out of my control, did not work out and in fact caused me some damage and lots of stress. I know it’s only 45 minutes, but I paid $200 per hour and an extra $150 is a lot for me (I’m just a broke expat American trying to start a life in Australia). Also, I’m concerned that the repair work might take more time than the original job.

In this situation, who should have to pay?