Back in the early 40's and 50's art in the tattoo studio might of been USN with anchors or USMC with a bullog. On the West Coast it could of been a chicano traditional portrait that by today's standard would be a cartoon. As you progressed in the 60's 70s and even the early part of the 80's the skull, panther and eagle dominated flash racks all over the Unite States.
During my apprenticeship during the early 90s we were taught flash and how to shade them with the minimal amount of shade and contrast. Most tattoos back then that were custom were done by only a few amount of artist around the country. We use to say that artist were just a copy machine because we were to take a pic someone picked off the wall and do the best we could to copy it on the person who picked it out. We never worried about color blending, never worried about soft or hard lining. We were paid to copy the picture.
At the beginning of this century we started to see artist break out of that mold. Many started refusing to just take a flash piece and put it on the body. They wanted to put their own view on the piece. Color blending started to take root. Adding on to a piece became popular with the artists twist. You can always tell a new school artist versus an old school artist. Old School artist follow the flash to a tee or refuse to do a lot of pieces because of the work involved. It's the attitude of the artist that also show how the studio is looked at by the others in the industry.
Some shops are happy just being a flash studio and nothing is wrong with that. Those studio's are still needed in the industry. They tend to be less expensive then most shops that do just custom work. I see no problems with that since I might be old school I still embrace the new generation of artist. At the same time embracing the new school I still like to see prices stay within reason. Does a portrait need to start at $350? Yes it does because of the skill needed by the artist to get the piece on. Does a kangi symbol need to be $50 bucks? No that's out of line because it's a flash piece for one, second off it takes like 15 minutes of work. Thats where Aberration Pro Custom Tattoo came up with the $10 Tattoo.
Would the shop charge $10 for say a heart an name? No but we would charge a fair price for it. Not $100 bucks for something like that, maybe $50 which is fair. So the art in shops will continue to evolve into more and more cool things. But prices will always remain the top priority to a shop in order to compete an stay afloat. It's a circus to try and mange both. But the shops that stay around are the ones who will make it in the business.