Colin F Brennan's Blog

As with any tattoo, you should give consideration to size and placement before getting too carried away with content. Always look ahead twenty years and try to picture how you will cope with questions about your tattoos. Are you still going to be proud to display it in public?

I would never try to discourage anyone from getting tattooed but I do like to know that they have weighed up the pro’s and con’s before actually getting the job done. Things like placement, content choice, muscle movement and skin stretch are all factors that professional tattooists build into their designs without a second thought. Once you have been doing it for a while it comes as second nature to consider how much a tattoo will ‘move’ if it is planted where the customer wishes.

At times a customer’s idea can be done as requested, but more often it needs to be moved to a different location or, sometimes totally redrawn altogether. Let’s look at this before we go too far into the actual content of the design.

As the first tattoo I am going to show you is for the lower back, our task is fairly easy. This part of the body doesn’t have a terrible amount of skin stretch or muscle movement but let’s get used to testing an area anyway. This practice is something that you should do before starting to draw any tattoo. The easiest way is to simply draw a few pen lines straight onto the skin.
Diagram 1 shows what I mean.

Have a friend draw 3 lines on your lower back while you stand perfectly still, facing front. The first line should be a horizontal line about 100mm long and about 30mm above the belt-line of those favorite jeans. This will be the center-line for the design, not the top edge.

The other 2 lines will be vertical lines parallel to each other and about 30mm either side if the spine. I say to use your ‘favorite jeans’ because different jeans manufacturers have varying belt-line heights.

I am sure you know this already but did you consider how much different your tattoo will look if it is half covered by your pants? The popular choice these days is the ‘low-rider’ style. These look excellent with lower back tattoos because they allow you the freedom of placing the tattoo in what I call the ‘sweet spot’ ( diagram 2 ).

As with most tattoos, perfect placement adds to the beauty of the design itself. A brilliant design placed 20mm too high is not as attractive to the eye. As we progress with this project you will begin to understand the importance of setting your tattoo as close to the ideal spot as possible.

Ok, now that you have your 3 guidelines in place, have a move around, twisting and bending while watching in the mirror. If you are having trouble understanding what I mean, try this. Drag out that mobile phone and spark up the camera. Stand perfectly still, facing front and have a friend take a photo. Your pen lines should be straight and the two vertical lines perfectly spaced apart. Now, while standing straight, turn your head to one side and keep turning until your shoulders start to rotate. Have your friend take another photo and compare the difference in the vertical lines. You will notice they are starting to move away from parallel.

At this point of shoulder turn, movement is marginal and the tattoo will still look fairly normal. However, the further you twist those shoulders around, the more the shape will distort. Now, while standing still and facing front, slide one hand down the side of your thigh until your fingertips are about 100mm from the knee. Have another photo taken and you will notice a considerable amount of movement in all three lines.

As this diagram shows, while your horizontal line still looks good, if a little crooked, the two perpendicular vertical lines have altered much more. Spreading apart at the top and slightly uneven in height is to be expected from the sideways range of movement. In this case the damage is minimal and, after all, no tattoo is going to look good in every body position. I only want you to be aware of this skin distortion caused by muscle movement so as to design the absolute best tattoo possible, something to be worn with pride. My only suggestion on the lower back is to try to avoid long vertical lines wherever possible, especially parallel ones.

The next decision to make is what size to have this work of art. When drawing flash for sale, I generally make lower back tattoos around 200mm wide and 100mm high.

This is not set in concrete so feel free to play with a few sizes. If you are not sure, try this. Drag out any old magazine and find a nice colourful page. Cut out a triangle with those basic dimensions ( 200mm wide x 100mm high ). Try it in place and look in the mirror. You will know almost immediately if it is too big. Simply trim it down until you find a perfect size. Some of you slimmer ladies may need to cut it back to 150 x 75, while a larger lady may need to go up to 250 x 125. Remember to trim all three sides proportionally to maintain shape integrity. Once you have the size, transfer these measurements onto paper and move on to the next step.

If you have any drawing skills and an idea for your tattoo, you can probably skip this step but I am going to assume everyone is a newbie so as to keep this project possible for all readers to complete.

This is where we decide on the content of your new piece. You can start on my site for a wide selection of free designs in easy to search categories. I have tried to portray various styles in each category so as to give the broadest range for reference.

There are hundreds of tattoo sites to search, some are obviously better than others. On AussieSmutly.com, as well as providing many tattoos to look through, I supply a small number of suggested links on the front page. With so much content out there to search, I have tried not to overload you with choices. Sites like TattooMeNow and Tattoo Johnny are among the top rankings for a reason. They contain at least some level of original content and regularly update their sites. So many other sites will charge you a hefty membership to view the same old stuff that’s been doing the rounds for 30 years. Try to avoid having the same tattoo as other people in your street. Strive for originality.

As you look through the thousands of tattoos on any decent site, I want you to look for a concept or idea that you like and write down a description of the image while it is downloading. I will try to get you to refer to your notes rather than ‘copy’ an image but more on that later. Cruise through a few folders until you have a fistful of notes and a few pictures ( try not to confuse yourself with too many ideas ).

In order to continue with the diagram part of this guide I will need to choose one myself. I am going to choose a tribal type design and put something in the middle, maybe a frog. I like the ‘tribal style’ as a basis because it is limitless in variations.

A tattoo should have a flow or feel about it and this is easy to create with a few flowing black lines.

Let’s move on to piecing it all together now. I would start by making a few copies of the template and playing around on paper with a few ideas. Here is a tip that will work well when doing a piece for the lower back. ‘Symmetry’ basically means that each side is a reflection of the other. Because symmetry is built into these pieces almost automatically, you only need to draw 1 side. You can then trace it and ‘flip’ it to help you keep as close as possible to symmetry. While having a symmetrical aspect to your tattoo is not absolutely essential, I believe it to be preferable for some parts of the body. The lower back is one of those body parts to benefit from symmetry. At this early stage try not to get too fussy. We will tidy up later, for now just pencil in the basic shape and try to build some ‘flow’ into it.

As you can see, I have sketched in the basic tribal section paying some attention to flow and outside edges while almost ignoring the centre of the design altogether. As I plan to put something in the centre of this design, it would be pointless at this stage to get concerned with making all the lines meet up.

Next I will draw up the frog in a basic outline. You can freehand this part or trace it from a reference image, or you could draw it from the notes you made earlier. That’s how to achieve truly original results, and more enjoyment but may not be in everyone’s bag of tricks so, if you have Photoshop here is a quick tip. 6 steps to steal an outline from any picture or photo.

Open Photoshop and your reference image. I usually make a copy of the image and play with that so I can’t possibly screw up the original picture, but that is optional. Let’s assume you have made a copy and have it open in Photoshop.
1. With your image open, go to the top menu ‘layer’ and select ‘duplicate layer’. Type in a file name if you wish and click ok.

2. Back up to the top menu and select ‘image’ , then ‘mode’ and from the pop-up list select ‘greyscale’. Another pop-up box will give you a question and three choice boxes. The box on the far right is ‘don’t flatten’ and this is the box to click. This is critical. We need two separate layers or it will not work.

3. Back up to the top menu, click ‘image’ again and slide down to ‘ adjustments’. A pop-up will give you quite a few choices but down towards the bottom you will find ‘invert’. Select it and your picture suddenly looks like a ‘negative’. It’s all good, that’s supposed to happen.

4. In your ‘layers’ dock on the right of your work area ( if you are running default photoshop docks down the right side of the screen, otherwise it will be one of the buttons/tabs in the top right of your screen ) and in the ‘layers’ tab you will see a drop down list of ‘layer properties’. In about the middle of the list is ‘Color Dodge’. Select it and your whole image turns pure white.

5. Go back up to the top menus and select filter. Slide down to about the middle of the choices to find ‘blur’. As you hold the cursor over ‘blur’ another menu opens. About halfway down this list you will find ‘gaussian blur’. Select it and an options box opens. In the ‘radius’ box you can type in ’1.0′ or use the slider to play around. Around 1.0 to 1.5 is pretty ideal for what we want. Ignore the image in the preview window ( the filters do not understand multiple layers very well ). Select ok when you are happy with the image in the main window.

6. Go back up to the top menu ‘layers’ tab and, down the bottom of the options, select ‘flatten image’.

That’s it. Remember, if you did not make a copy of the original file at the start, don’t forget to ‘save as‘ , so you don’t overwrite the original file.

Repeat this procedure to make outline for center object.

We now have our tribal outlines and our center piece. It’s time to try it all together at this point, just to make sure it will all work as a unit.

You may find you need a slight increase or reduction in size of your center object. Remember: You have already chosen the correct size for your tattoo with your coloured paper cutout. Stick to these measurements. If anything needs an adjustment it must be the center object. If you need to reduce your reference picture a lot, you will have to adjust the level of detail also. What I mean by this is, if you have a perfect picture for the middle but it needs to be reduced in size by 50%, you will need to remove some detail from the piece so it isn’t too ‘busy’. The danger of leaving all the detail in is that people will need to be close to it to really appreciate it. You may find that from 10 feet away it looks too dark or difficult to understand. Equally, a simple design that has to be enlarged considerably may need some detail added so it doesn’t look ‘cartoony’.

Here you can see my tribal base with the frog outline overlaid on it. I have, by now, decided on the size of the frog so I can go ahead and ink in the outlines.

With the outline inked in, all that remains is to shade and color your design. I strongly recommend that you print several copies of what you have. The reason for this is that, unless you have done this before, you are unlikely to be thrilled with your first effort. Shading in particular is a difficult thing to master first time. Once you are happy with the shading you should print a few copies of that and start the coloring. Try a few different color combinations until something really grabs you.

That’s it. You did it. It doesn’t need to look perfect, but you can do it over if you want. It only has to mean something to YOU, so don’t be a slave to it. Just play around until you are happy with your efforts. Now you can show this to your chosen artist and you will be sure that everyone is on the same page from the start.

This tutorial brought to you by www.AussieSmutly.com