No one is wrong here on either side.
Nastee: it’s your tattoo. No one has to like it but you. It may be that the source drawing is by some very famous person and it spoke to you, but just because it’s a nice piece of art that you like doesn’t mean that it will traslate into a great tattoo. The line work in the art is just fine as art, but from an outsiders viewpoint it looks suspect as a tattoo. That was a difficult piece to try and make a nice tattoo out of. But at the end of the day, the only person that has to like it is you. If you’re happy with it, go with that.
And even though some of these messages have gotten a little personal and “nastee” (sorry, had to do it), these folks are trying to give you honest feedback and be helpful to you, even though it may be hard to see because you feel you have to defend your ink. A good artist probably would have had a discussion with you before hand about how that was going to turn out and tried to make suggestions to make it more pleasing to the eye given the medium of tattooing. Maybe they did do that and you didn’t listen, who knows. But there are a lot of bad tattoos out there, and this group gets frustrated seeing them over and over again. Your buddies at the bowling alley won’t. Just know your audience and sort of expect to be given brutal honesty here.
Maybe if you told us why that piece was important to you, and why you felt it would be good for you, it might help us understand your motivation?
