I was always of the mind that skin art should be more symbolic than directly representative. why in gods name would you try to produce portrait type art in tat form is beyond me. Ive never ever seen one come out worth a durn.

I agree. Even some of the ones I have seen (good) artists put out as part of their portfolio have been iffy.

I take back what I said earlier.

There's a small pool of portrait tattooists that do absolutely amazing work. But they're rare and if you get one without seeing exemplars of similar work from the artist then you deserve what you get. Without a special talent, it is going to still be essentially gray line art and it'll end up looking like a Wall Street Journal caricature.

But yeah, I'm strictly a stylized or abstract person when it comes to tats. Human faces are particularly awkward since we're so attuned to them that any defect is glaringly apparent and as you age it is going to warp and fade anyway, just adding to it.