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.

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: