Turtles are not that hard to draw, but trying to stylize it into a flowing Polynesian design is a bit more tricky 🙂
In the tattoo community, the turtle is widely used as it has a lot of meaning and symbolism, ranging from “immortality, fertility, stability, strength and security.
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.