Nice work Matt. Great to have two different versions of the same subject. Were these for friends, or just a coincidence? Its good seeing you keeping to your consistent style for both of these. These look great. I think my only feedback would be that a blue background could compliment the oranges really well & make the colours balance a pop a little more. A simple blurred background really lets the details in the foreground shine. Nice to see you getting practice & thanks for sharing these!

Great to see some progress, thanks for posting these Marissa! The octopus is coming along nice & its great to see some colour added. Is the area on the face/head finished now? As some quick advice- while you can fade from colour out to skin like this, I actually prefer fading into another lighter colour, even if it is a skin tone. If this heals & looks good then that's great & no changes needed. I just find some colours are very hard to fade out smoothly to skin. If you try to use them like grey wash it will only work with certain colours, so takes a little trial to figure out which. After some trial I now pack colour throughout my whole design. I nearly left the face as skin in the recent Mario I posted, but packing in skin colour made a huge difference & some lighter tones really make the tattoo pop out from the colour of their skin. I'm going to cover colour blending in a new course soon, but if you have any questions, just let me know! Moving to a client from out of your friends & family is also a great step forward. I'm looking forward to seeing how the tattoo comes out! Are you planning colour or shading for that tattoo, or straight outline?

@Marissa Scott that would be great. This is a quick first meeting, so come & go as you need. I'd just love to do a quick meet up & talk about where we go next. I'm really hoping to build a community beyond just lessons & courses!

@Matt Standafer Google says Eastern 2pm, Western 1pm Matt. Which time zone are you in? Great to know for future calls!

@Josh Foster ok great to know. Yeah keep practicing, but it is also important to be drawing too! The time you spend drawing in sketchbooks is just as valuable as jumping into tattoo practice. I'd really recommend you start drawing, even just some simple designs to tattoo. You can share your designs along with your practice tattooing. That is a great next step for you & we're here to give advice & hold you accountable to putting the work in!

@Greg Hardie thanks for making an intro Greg & sharing your work. Great to see you are practicing on skins as well as tattooing. The more you practice, the smoother those lines will get. Just please be careful that everything is being wrapped correctly. Can I ask what the stand with holes is in the right of your video? We need to make sure everything in the tattoo area & everything we touch is wrapped to avoid cross contamination. So that stand & the bottle really need to be wrapped & away from where you are tattooing. I'm here to help improve your art & tattooing. Would it also be useful for me to film how I set up safely? Safety for ourselves & clients is the most important thing, then creating great art is right behind that.