"I'm sorry to hear that," Lauren said quietly and with genuine sympathy, hearing the anxiety in his voice. It wasn't the first memorial tattoo she'd been asked to do and she was sure it wouldn't be the last, but that didn't make any of them less important. It was an honor for her to be trusted to so permanently mark anything on anyone, when it had real meaning. She thought a moment, reaching under the counter to pull out the black binder housing her portfolio. "We'll come up with something," she assured him. "The most important thing to do is relax and take our time. No one's in any rush, right? If we don't settle on something today, this shop's not going anywhere."
She twirled the tip of the pencil against her pad for a second or two, finding her starting point. "Okay," she said. "First, please call me Lauren. Or Ren, I answer to both. But 'miss' is way too formal. Second, the biggest key to your piece is going to be figuring out a style first." She flipped open her portfolio so she could show him examples. "You can do something more portrait-like and realistic, like this, or we can do something more stylized, like this. I do a lot of black and gray and linework, but we can add color if you want - we can do it really bright and bold--" She flipped to another photo to illustrate. "--or mostly black and gray with really pale washes of color, like this one."