AI tattoo generator from one sentence

Black ink tattoo ideas: fine line, blackwork and dotwork

Five designs in black only, from a single thin line to a mandala shaded entirely in dots.

Fine line rose

A fine line tattoo design of a single rose with a long stem and two leaves: thin, delicate black lines and light stippled shading, no color. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.

Thin, even lines and light stippling on the petals, with the long stem we asked for. It came back as a photo of a slightly tilted sheet of paper rather than a flat scan.

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Geometric wolf

A blackwork geometric tattoo design of a wolf's head: the face built from triangles and straight lines, half solid black and half dotwork shading, sharp and symmetrical. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.

Triangles and straight lines, solid black on one half and dots on the other, as asked. Bold enough to read from across a room.

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Single line mountains

A minimalist single-line tattoo design: one continuous thin black line that draws three mountain peaks with a crescent moon above them. Small and simple. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.

Three peaks and a crescent moon in what reads as one unbroken line. Small enough for a wrist or an ankle, and the simplest design on this page.

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Botanical wildflowers

A botanical tattoo design of a small bouquet of wildflowers and ferns tied with a thin ribbon: fine black linework and soft gray shading, like an old botanical drawing. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.

Wildflowers and ferns tied with a ribbon, fine lines and soft gray shading, like a page from an old field guide.

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Dotwork mandala

A dotwork mandala tattoo design: a symmetrical circle of petals and rings, shaded entirely with fine black dots, crisp and ornamental. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.

Rings of petals shaded in fine dots, perfectly round. The most detailed design here, which makes it the one to size with care: dots set close together can blur into gray as a tattoo ages.

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Color tattoo ideas: traditional, Japanese and watercolor

Three styles where the color does half the work.

American traditional swallow

An American traditional tattoo design of a swallow in flight: bold black outlines, solid red, yellow and green, simple shading, like a classic sailor tattoo. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.

Bold outlines and solid red, yellow and green, like old sailor flash. It added a few small motion marks around the bird.

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Japanese koi

A Japanese-style tattoo design of a koi fish swimming up through waves with cherry blossoms: bold black outlines, orange and red scales and blue-gray water. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.

A koi swimming up through waves and cherry blossoms, in bold outlines and orange scales. It closed the waves into an oval that would sit well on a shoulder blade or a thigh.

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Watercolor hummingbird

A watercolor tattoo design of a hummingbird drinking from a flower: thin black outlines with soft splashes of blue, purple and pink that bleed past the lines. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.

Thin outlines with blue, purple and pink running past them, as asked. It drew the design on a booklet page rather than a loose sheet.

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AI tattoo generator from a photo

Pet portraits are the most common reason to start from a photo. The small picture is the photo we gave it.

Your dog as a fine line tattoo

Turn the dog in this photo into a tattoo design: a fine line portrait of its head with light stippled shading in black ink, keeping its face and ears recognizable. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.

The retriever's head in fine lines and stippling, tongue out as in the photo. The ears, the eyes and the shape of the face read as the same dog.

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How to write a tattoo prompt

1. Name the style first. Fine line, blackwork, dotwork, American traditional, Japanese, watercolor: each one changes the lines and the colors more than anything else you write.
2. Then the subject, and how it's drawn. Every prompt on this page has the same shape:A [style] tattoo design of [the subject]: [the lines, the shading and the colors]. A tattoo design on plain white paper, like a page from a tattoo artist's flash sheet, centered with white space around it. No words, letters, signature or watermark.
3. Keep the last line. Plain white paper and no words gives you a design your artist can read, instead of a photo of someone's arm.
4. Pick 1:1 and 2K. 1K takes 1 credit and 2K takes 2 credits; 2K gives the artist finer lines to look at.

See it on your skin first

A design on white paper tells you little about how big it should be on your forearm. Upload a photo of the spot together with the design on our tattoo try on page: we put the rose, the koi and the swallow from this page on an arm, a back and a calf.

What the artist still has to do

Plenty of tattoo artists are skeptical of AI designs, and they have a point. A picture on a screen isn't a stencil. The artist decides how thick the lines are, how much space the shading needs, and how big the piece must be so it still reads in twenty years, when ink has spread a little. Our dotwork mandala is the clearest case: lovely on paper, and the one most likely to need sizing up.

So use the generator to find what you want, and bring that to the artist. Our designs describe a style and never copy a named artist's work; keep it that way in your own prompts.

What it costs

There's no free image: every design is paid with credits. One takes 1 credit at 1K, 2 at 2K and 3 at 4K (one more with 3 or 4 photos), and packs cost $4.90 for 20 credits or $9.90 for 70, with no subscription. Ours took 15 to 22 seconds each at 1K.