First of all, use good quality pictures of your shoulder, back or other part that you want to tattoo. Here’s an image of a blank shoulder, which I use for this tutorial, and also for my tattoo website.

You can download the image for free and use it for your own projects if you want.

Step 1:

Open the image in Photoshop

First open this shoulder image in Photoshop, which is exactly 400×400 pixels. Then get a tattoo picture that you want to place on the body. I use one of my high resolution designs from my website. Make sure your tattoo has a white background!

Step 2:

Resize the tattoo design

To match the size of the tattoo to the shoulder image, resize it to around 325 pixels wide (the height depends on the proportions of the image)

Step 3:

Create a new layer

Before you can place the tattoo, you need to add a new layer on the shoulder image.
You can rename that layer to “tattoo design”:

Step 4:

Use the Vanishing Point filter

For a realistic tattoo image, you need to match the perspective both the shoulder design and the tattoo. The filter “Vanishing Point” in Adobe Photoshop CS3 will help you with that.
First you need to copy the tattoo to the clipboard (memory), so select the tattoo => press Ctrl+A (which selects the whole image. Then press Ctrl+C (copy)

Okay, thats sorted! Let’s go to the fun part!

Go to Filter => Vanishing Point

Then draw a plane that matches the perspective of the shoulder image. You can see it’s a bit tapered to the back and the centre line corresponds with the line of the upper arm.

Step 5:

Paste the tattoo design

When you completed the perspective panel, simply hit Ctrl+V to paste the tattoodesign. You can scale it a bit to match the shoulder, with the selected tool in the picture below. Hit enter when you’re happy with the size.

To get rid of the white background, go to your layer palet and select “multiply” from the drop-down list, as shown in the picture.

Step 6:

Add a layer mask

The tattoo covers the whole image and extends to the background as well. This is not how we want it, so lets add a layer mask. By using a layer mask, you can hide certain parts of the image.
Ok, simply select the tattoo design layer and hit the add layer mask button at the red arrow:

With the layer mask selected, you can use the black brush to paint/erase all parts of the tattoo that you want to hide.
(to reveal it back, simply use a white brush)
There are multiple ways to hide these parts. You can also select the boundary of the shoulder with the selection tools and fill it with black for example.

The final digital tattoo

Congratulations! You finished this tutorial and made your first digital tattoo mockup. If you want more information, or have questions, please leave a comment below!

Cheers Mark

Ps. don’t forget to check my tattoo galleries for the latest high quality Polynesian tribal flash drawings!

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Square and Symmetrical Canvas wall art

These tribal tattoos are scanned in high resolution, so its works on large canvas sizes without any problem. I like clean and minimalistic arts and patterns, so here’s what I came up with after a few hours of editing in Photoshop.
The first three canvas prints are square pieces in a symmetrical composition, with bright colors, which makes a great impression on your white or black wall/background.
Available in 20 different formats, ranging from 11″x 11″ to the impressive 60″x 60″ format.

Black and white tattoo prints

For people who are more into black & white styles, I made a few square designs on a white background.

– The first one is a mix of traditional spearhead patterns, with some bird elements and coconut leafs.

– The second canvas is a Kirituhi Maori artwork with flowing koru/fern curves in negative space.

– The third one has elements and patterns of the Samoan tribal style with a mix of Maori style curves.

More decorative canvas prints

If you are inspired and want to see more, please visit my Zazzle shop for all designs and prints!
To get the best price on each of the canvas prints, please check these discount codes

High resolution tribal tattoos

Ps. You can find all high resolution tribal tattoos on my website galleries, so if you’re interested in “real” tattoos, go check it out!
Maori, Samoan, Marquesas and other Polynesian designs, hand drawn artworks and great ideas for your next tattoo!

Cheers Mark

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Turtles are not that hard to draw, but trying to stylize it into a flowing Polynesian design is a bit more tricky

For the people who cannot wait… here’s the high quality design and linedrawing on my website: tribal turtle tattoo

Lets get started! First I started drawing a basic outline of the turtle and tried to incorporate some Maori / Polynesian koru shapes like it is surrounded by water:

Then I started on the tribal patterns inside the turtle body, with some rows of spearheads and other repetitive shapes and elements

Tracing the outlines

Once the pencil drawing was completed, I used 3 different markers to trace the outlines of the tattoodesign. First a thick Edding Marker with a 3mm tip, then a Copic Multiliner 1mm, and finally a Pigma Micron 04 for the finer details in the design.

Shading the design with grey Copic Markers

When all the black lines and shapes were traced, I got to the favorite part of designing tribal tattoos, shading and layering with my set of Classic Copic Markers in 9 different greytones.

I use the N5 marker to draw the thick shading and the other tones to add more depth.
Below you see a photo of the first stages of the shading proces:

High quality tattoo design

Once the shading was done, the final high quality design looks like this. The turtle has a nice row of spearheads flowing from the body into the full tattoo.

Digital tattoo mockups on various bodyparts

When I complete the design, I make a set of digital mockups for my customers, so you can see how the tattoo looks on different bodyparts. It’s a rough preview, so it’s not 100% perfect, but it gives you an idea.
Here are 5 different examples:

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