We do not, and will never, use AI!

We are a strictly ZERO AI studio. Our artists do not, and will never, use AI for tattoo designs, stencils, emails, or anything else.

The best part of our job is designing something unique and beautiful for you, by hand. We're professional artists - we love the whole process of creating designs, pieced together from your vague ideas, scribbled sketches, reference photos and conversations. We get to know you and what you love, and the ideas we have together develop into something special that you'll treasure forever. When you're paying for a tattoo, you're paying for something bespoke and special to you. You deserve original artwork which fits your body, not generic crap which is generated by stealing other people's artwork, destroying nature and funding billionaires.

We know that sometimes clients find it really hard to get their idea across to their tattoo artist. Sometimes the idea in your head feels impossible to describe, or sometimes you're not even really sure of exactly what you want. It’s easy to type your idea into ChatGPT and send that over to us – but please DON’T DO THIS. Here are some reasons why:

• The images you’re creating with generative AI are literally stealing from artists who have spent their lives learning and developing their style and skills. That’s small businesses, independent artists, crafters - the people who usually don’t make much money but make the world you live in a much more interesting place!

• To create one image, your AI app is using as much electricity as charging a smartphone several times over or brewing many pots of coffee. Writing a simple 100-word email using ChatGPT can use over half a litre of water.

• It completely stunts our creativity as artists. You come to us for our interpretation of your idea, so receiving a fully rendered picture that you want an exact copy of means we aren’t actually getting to do the ’artist’ part of our job. That’s the bit we love the most!

• Most AI art is generic. That image created is a Frankenstein’s monster of a bunch of different styles shoved together and isn’t special to you in any way.

• We have literally seen tattoos where the characters have six fingers on each hand, lines that don’t make sense, eyebrows floating off into space, stumps for feet. You might not notice these things until it’s too late and it’s permanently on your body.

• You’re funding genocide (look up how many AI companies are funding Israel), the Trump administration, the building of AI data centres in poor areas, capitalism, billionaires getting richer and richer.

So what can you do rather than use AI to tell your artist your idea?

• A quick sketch: you might be embarrassed about your crappy sketch on the back of an envelope or drawn with a thick red line on your phone screen, but we love it! It gets the idea across quickly and gives us plenty of space to develop it. We're not judging your art skills, we're here to work with you.

• A consultation in person: coming down to the studio for a coffee and a chat about your design means we can hear the ideas described in a way only directly from brain-to-mouth can do! We can also discuss how we would develop the idea together and answer any questions you have about what will work best.

• Reference photos: Send us other tattoos with the placement you like, photos you’ve found, colours you like, compositions that interest you. We’ve had everything from Pinterest boards to Powerpoint presentations to physical folders crammed with paper, and they all help us to build up an idea of your likes and of you as a person.

• Go through our portfolios, tell us what you like or don't like about previous tattoos we've done.

Remember, a good tattoo artist will be able to help you bring your idea to life and will usually enjoy every part of the process. Don't waste your money on artists who have zero morals and take the laziest route - get the art you deserve.