So today was the day to visit Memorial 2. Lee, the manager, messaged me that she wouldn't be there, but told me that Phil and Jason would be expecting me. I found the shop fine and it looked pretty quiet. Jason had stepped out and Phil was tattooing, but talked to me anyway. He asked to see the ink I already had, probably to get a feel for my tastes. I didn't have the pictures of what I wanted because our printer is out of ink. When Jason got back, he helped me get pictures of what I wanted. I showed Phil and he seemed down with it. He said he'd done stuff like that before. They're going to have to be fairly sizable to look good. They may end up going pretty far down my back.
He went ahead and booked me in right there. Apparently, he's so in demand, he's booked 2 months out. The earliest he could take me was March 22. It's good because it gives me time to save up. He charges $150/hr and I didn't want to haggle. It's one thing to approach an artist and be like "Look, this is my budget", it's another to be like "I'm shopping around and looking to collect". If you're looking to collect, you work with their pricing, not the other way around. When you get to the level that you're booked 2 months out, you can name your price. So now I just have to figure out how to squirrel away roughly $1500. He booked me for 3 sessions at 3 hours each. He thinks he can get them done faster than that, but since he's so busy, it's best to pounce on a time slot when you can.
Now off to Yelp to review my initial experience with the shop.
She's going on the left:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mucha-Maud_Adams_as_Joan_of_Arc-1909.jpg
And she's going on the right:
http://www.linesandcolors.com/images/2006-01/mucha_250.jpg
