How   this   works.

What this is

One site, one roster, one page for each artist.

1,253 artists and 3,408 photographs of healed work. Each page carries the artist's name, their handle, their city, their work with a written description of what is in each photograph, and one way to reach them. That page is also a booking link an artist can put in an Instagram bio, so the address they hand out belongs to them instead of being a rented spot inside somebody else's app.

The atlases are not separate websites. An atlas is this one roster cut by the style an artist actually tattoos, and there are 10 of them, 9 with enough artists to have their own page yet. An artist who works in two styles is one record on two lists, not two records.

Nothing on this site is for sale. Not placement, not a feature slot, not a badge, not a boost, not to artists and not to brands. Order on a page is roster order or distance, never money and never follower count. Talomis takes no cut of a booking, holds no card and has no payment code in it at all. There is no cart, no checkout, no deposit and no escrow anywhere in the software.

It is run by Tony, @argentotattoos, a tattoo artist working in Hooksett, New Hampshire. He tattoos for a living this week and next week. His own page sits in the roster on the same terms as everybody else's. Where this site says "we" it means one working tattooer and whichever artists have joined him.

What we checked, and what we did not

This is the part most directories write vaguely on purpose. Here it is flat.

1. 001
   What we did look at.

   A person who tattoos for a living opened the artist's published work and judged that it fits a style. That is the whole of it. It is a judgement about pictures, made by one working tattooer, and it is the only reason anybody is on this roster.

2. 002
   What we did not look at.

   No licence, no registration, no insurance policy, no identity document, no training record, no health inspection, no criminal record and no references. Talomis runs none of those on anybody, and no page on this site says that any artist is safe to be tattooed by. If you read a page here as a recommendation, we have written it badly.

3. 003
   Why the licence one is not laziness.

   There is no version of a licence check that is true across this roster. Some US states license the individual artist, some license only the shop, some leave it to the county and some have no body art law at all. In England the council registers a tattooist and has no power to refuse, so registration says nothing about skill. Scotland weighs training and experience. Wales only started licensing practitioners in November 2024. Across the rest of Europe it runs from a hygiene course to a premises licence to nothing at national level. One badge reading "licensed" would be false somewhere on almost every page.

4. 004
   Where the pages came from.

   Every artist page prints a line next to the artist's name saying how the page came to exist, and there are two forms of it and only two: built by Talomis from that handle's public Instagram, or claimed by the artist. The roster does not carry the date each pull happened, so the pages say that plainly instead of stamping the build date on and reading as though they were checked this morning.

5. 005
   The marks, and why no page has one.

   There is a ladder of marks on this site and every rung names both halves: what was tested, and what it does not say. "Instagram control checked" means somebody proved control of an account on a date. It does not say who they are. No artist page carries any mark today, because the checks that grant them run on a server that is not switched on. The word "verified" does not appear on its own anywhere on this site, and it should not be used about anybody on it.

The honest summary. Somebody who knows what a tattoo is looked at the work. Nobody checked the person. Those are two different sentences and this site is only entitled to the first one. The long version is in the terms, and it says the same thing in the same words.

How a request reaches an artist

1. You find one artist. On the coastline, on an atlas page, on the region page, or straight out of a search result or an assistant's answer. Every route ends at one named artist, because every request goes to one named artist.
2. You send from their page, or from the intake. Where the tattoo goes, tapped on a body map. The idea, the size, the timing. A name and an email. Photographs are optional. No account is made and no card is asked for at any point.
3. It goes to that artist and to nobody else. If they hold their page it lands in their studio inbox and their email the moment you send, and the reply comes from them rather than from us. If they have not claimed the page, we pass it to their public email where there is one and say plainly that a reply can take longer, or we hold it so it is waiting the day they claim.
4. Money is settled between you and the artist. The way it always has been. Nothing comes out of the price on the way past, because there is nothing here to take it with.

The one promise Talomis makes about itself, on the surfaces Talomis answers: a working artist reads every request, and where we can find a strong match we reply within two days. If we cannot, we say that too. We never promise an artist's own reply time, because we do not control it.

Where this stands in this build. The intake and the short form on each artist page send for real, to that one artist. The marks are the part that is not switched on: the checks that grant them run on a server that is not live, so no page carries one. Claiming a page still runs on the older atlas site and moves here at launch, and the studio says so on screen rather than drawing a dead button.

How the automated booking works

Some artists switch on a calendar picker instead of a form. When they have, their page shows real open times rather than a contact box. Here is the mechanism, because a booking system you cannot see the inside of is a booking system you cannot trust.

• The times are their real calendar. We ask the artist's own Google Calendar which hours are already taken, at the moment you load the page, inside the hours they set, in their timezone, with the minimum notice they asked for. We are told busy or open and nothing else: we never read what any of those events are. If the calendar cannot be reached, the picker does not appear at all rather than offering a time nobody can honour.
• A video consult confirms itself. Pick it and it is booked: the appointment is written into the artist's calendar and a calendar invite goes to you. If the artist turned on video consults, a meeting link rides along on the invite.
• An in person consult does not. Booking one sends a request and holds that time so nobody else takes it. Nothing goes on the artist's calendar until they accept, because their calendar must never show an appointment they have not agreed to. They confirm it personally, and the studio address comes in that confirmation. Please do not travel until it arrives.
• An unanswered request lapses instead of hanging. Twenty four hours, then the hold releases, the time reopens and you are told. Nobody is left waiting on somebody who is under a machine all day.
• The consult costs nothing and there is nothing to pay to hold it. No deposit, no card, no fee. Anyone who asks you to pay to hold or confirm a Talomis consult is not your artist and is not us.
• You can cancel from the email. A link, no login and no account. Please use it rather than not turning up, so the artist can give that hour to somebody else.

What to check yourself, before you go

Because we did not check any of it, and because these are the checks that actually tell you something.

1. 001
   Ask to see the licence, where there is one.

   Most shops that hold one display it. Where a licence or a registration exists, a working artist will show it to you without being awkward about it, and the ones who are proud of it are usually the ones who did the hardest version of getting it. Where there is nothing to show, that is often the law and not a warning sign.

2. 002
   Ask your local health department, not us.

   They are the ones who inspect the shop, and in most places they will tell you whether it is registered and when it was last looked at. That is a real check, made by people with the authority to make it. We have no such authority and no such record.

3. 003
   Confirm through the artist's own channel.

   Message the handle on Instagram and confirm the appointment, and anything about a deposit, there. Talomis never asks anybody for money, holds no card and takes no cut. The artist contacts you directly about a deposit, and a real request will match their own public account. Anyone claiming to be from Talomis and asking you to pay is a scam.

4. 004
   Look at the address before you go.

   Most of them are working shops. If the address turns out to be a private home, that is between you and the artist, so take somebody with you and tell a friend where you are going. Talomis has never seen any of these addresses. We only publish a map link when an artist has given us an exact one and confirmed it, and no artist has yet, so no page here shows directions.

5. 005
   Ask for healed work.

   A photograph taken ten minutes after the needle flatters everybody. Healed work at six months is the honest picture, and it is the thing this site tries to show. Ask for more of it, of the same body part, at the same size.

If a page here is about you

All 1,253 pages on this site were written by Talomis from public work, so the roster would be useful before anybody had joined it. Not one of them has been claimed yet. That was our decision and not the artist's, which is why both doors below have to be shorter than the way in.

• Take it over. Sign in at the studio with an email and a password. No card, no trial, nothing to pick. The studio edits the one row your page is built from: profile, photographs, links, conventions, guest spots, store, requests, booking. Change it there and it changes everywhere the page is built. Today the claim step still runs on the older atlas site and moves here at launch, and the studio says so on screen instead of drawing a dead button.
• Take it down. One email to bookings@neotradatlas.com saying which handle, and the page comes down. No reason required, no account required, nothing to prove, and nobody will argue with you or counter offer. We answer the same day we read it and aim to have it gone inside seven days. What actually gets deleted, and what a search engine may still be holding, is its own page.
• Fix it instead. Wrong city, wrong name, wrong style, or work on the page that is not yours. Tell us which and we change it the same day we read it. The style we list you under is our reading of your published work and not a statement you made about yourself, and it is the thing we get wrong most often.
• Nothing here is charged for. Not being listed, not claiming, not leaving, not a badge and not a better position in any list. There is nothing on this site for sale, to you or to anybody else. The covenant is that written down and dated.