i had someone start an amazing sleeve on me and then he took off for another state and was never to be heard from again. no one really knows where he is. my sleeve stayed unfinished for nearly three years, so i went back to his old shop and had someone in the shop who'd watched it from drawing to as far as it had gotten finish it up for me. it's such a relief to have it complete, but it's still weird to have someone else finish the piece.
any one else ever go through this?
it's so frustrating, i know!!

Yes i have gone through that...i had the same artist since i was 17 he did six of my tattoos, and i went back in the start my 7th that i had an appt for and everything and he wasn't there. He just quit! I was so mad. He could have at least called to tell me where he went or let me know that my appt was no longer. It was very frustrating because i had to drive and hour and fifteen minutes to go there in the first place. But now i have found an amazing artist at the same shop who is even better...so i guess it worked out great for me in the end.

I went through something kinda like that. I used to go to this one parlour (got my first five tats there), and the woman who did tattoos #4 and #5 was wonderful! She was just starting to become "my artist", but while she was doing #5, she told me that she was moving to another city in a month. So my ink addiction was put on hold for a while until I found a new artist at a new parlour. But, in a way, it was for the best. Because she moved, I met Andreas (my artist now) and he has given me four more absolutely beautiful tats ... and will do another one very, very soon.

I certainly did. I've been working on a full sleeve for the past few years. The guy who did the half sleeve, Uncle Tim (Tim Heikotter) got it outlined and filled in, but when I went back to talk to him about a year later, he had turned into a travelling artist. Apparently he's somewhere in Hawaii now.

I was a little surprised. I showed up to the shop and asked one of the piercers if Tim was there and he said no. I asked if another artist was there who i was familiar with, and he said he hadn't seen Tim. I asked if he was still around and they let me know he left the area about 6 months before I went back to the shop. I was pretty dumbfounded, to say the least.

You can't expect an artist to wait around for one customer whom has been working on a piece for a long time.

I wouldn't hang around for a year in the hope that the person might come back. I'd rather be out there making money.