Blue Mason

Apollo consultations with Blue are booked through the studio's consultation form — you describe the piece in a sentence, upload 2–3 reference images, note your placement and honest scale, and the studio routes the booking to Blue's calendar. New-client consultations with Blue typically run 6–12 weeks out. If your timeline is shorter, another Apollo bench often has the window. The consultation is unhurried — come with the sentence, the references, and the honest scale ceiling. One hour of consultation does a month of design work.

Fine line, realism, traditional, tribal, and cover-ups. The portfolio spans botanical fine line on forearms and ribs, photorealistic portraits and memorial pieces, Sailor-Jerry-descended traditional flash, Polynesian-lineage and geometric tribal, and cover-up work that routes into traditional or black-and-gray styles. If your piece is a watercolor splash or a micro-script sleeve, another Apollo bench is the better match. Blue will tell you this at consultation — the goal is the right match, not every booking routed to the founder.

Blue founded The Apollo Tattoo Studio in 2007 and has been tattooing continuously since. That's two decades at the Santa Monica chair. Several of Apollo's longest-standing clients booked their first piece with Blue in the first few years of the studio and are still returning for fourth and fifth pieces. The portfolio reads accordingly — a catalog of pieces that have healed, aged, and been lived with for a decade-plus. That track record is what you're booking when you book the founder bench.

Blue's portfolio centers on mid-to-large work — forearm, calf, thigh, back panel, half-sleeve. Micro pieces under two inches are not where his book sits. Clients booking small fine-line work (under 2 inches, script, minimal single-needle) are often routed to Hannah Newman, Apollo's junior artist, whose portfolio is built around that scale. The style matches, the calendar is faster, and Blue oversees the work. If you're set on booking Blue specifically, scale the piece to 3 inches or above and the math works.

Cover-ups are a Blue specialty. Bring daylight photos of the existing piece taken from multiple angles, a sense of what (if anything) you want to keep visible, and an open style — traditional and black-and-gray cover more aggressively than fine line ever will. The consultation decides one of three paths: direct coverage, laser-lightening first (with a partner clinic Apollo refers to) then coverage, or a hybrid where part of the existing piece becomes part of the new design. Cover-ups are not quick consultations. Plan for an hour.

Pricing at Apollo is quoted at consultation based on the sketch, the sitting plan, and the scope — not from the idea. We do not quote from a phone photo or a text description because the sketch is where the honest math lands. Small fine-line or traditional pieces typically run a single session. Mid-scale traditional, neo-traditional, botanical, illustrative, or realism pieces run one to two sessions. Realism portraits and detailed illustrative pieces run two to four sessions. Half-sleeves, full sleeves, and back panels run four to eight sessions. All specifics are discussed in the room.

Three references (not thirty). A signed approval on the final sketch from your consultation. Comfortable clothing that exposes the placement without requiring gymnastics to adjust. A real meal before you arrive. A water bottle. A snack for longer sessions. Your valid ID. Your deposit receipt. Leave alcohol off the menu for 48 hours before and ibuprofen off for 24 hours before — both thin the blood and affect the session. Arrive 15 minutes early so the stencil prep doesn't cut into chair time.

Apollo has four artists on the bench, each with a different portfolio. Raa runs photorealism — the hyper-realistic portrait and nature work. David DaVinci brings a fine-arts training to portrait work and color realism. Hannah Newman, Apollo's junior artist, runs fine line, script, minimalist, and small-scale work with a fast calendar and Blue's oversight. Plus Blue Mason (piercing) and Bunny Vogt handle Apollo's piercing room. Booking the match matters more than booking the name — Blue routes between benches at consultation when the portfolio fit is better elsewhere.