Heyo.

I got my first tattoo in December. Because it was so close to Christmas and time was limited, my artist ended up splitting it into three sessions: one in Dec. for the lines and one in January for the color followed by a touch-up session in March.

The thing is… There are about five different colors in it: green, red, purple, blue, and yellow. All of them but the blue have stayed just fine, but the blue ink wasn’t done right the first time. I noticed that my artist left some of the skin patchy and uncolored, but he said that it would likely even out as it healed.

That didn’t happen. It healed and looked terrible and spotty, not the nice dark to light blue gradient I had wanted. So I went back and he tried to touch it up. As he went over the blue a second time, he kept saying that he had never had so much of a problem getting blue to stick to someone’s skin. He spent awhile working on it, and when it looked alright he let me go and left it to heal.

It healed fine, and looked fine for a few weeks after it healed. Then, suddenly, the color started to disappear. There are areas of my skin where it looks like the pigment clustered or something, where there are just spots of darker blue that are obviously from the second round of ink.

I haven’t done anything different. I don’t tan, don’t smoke or anything, and I keep my skin really well moisturized with Eucerin. I’m incredibly upset because I dropped nearly $200 on the damn thing, it’s on a very visible part of my arm, and the color looks terrible.

There are other spots too, on the underside of my arm, that my artist missed when he was touching it up. They just don’t have any color, or the color leeched out after the first round and he never bothered to touch it up. He’s not completely new to the art, but he’s more of an artist than a tattooist from what I understand and has been in the business about 5/6 years. He’s a great artist, but it’s clear that he doesn’t know how to fix it other than to try and go over it again in the same way he’s been doing. And last time, my skin got overworked and it left two very visible white scars so I’d prefer to avoid that if I can.

Should I wait for it to heal a little bit longer and seek out someone else to try and touch it up? I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t know what else to do. Am I being too much of a perfectionist?