First off thank you so much for all the love you’ve given my Hiphop vs Comics series. It’s been humbling to see how many times these images have been shared and liked over social media. Thank you all!

Start with a sketch.

Over the past weeks a few of you have been asking about my technique when rendering tattoos on these characters so I put together this post with a quick step by step to help you out in your own process.

You’ll want to begin with a pencil sketch of your character including the tattoos.  Take your time making sure you have the correct placement and mold the tattoo sketches to the curvatures of the body part it’s placed on.

Skin deep.

Once you are ready to move on to color think about the following. Tattoos sit on top of the skin, the most common mistake I see young artists make is rendering out their tattoos first without rendering the skin underneath.

Since, tattoos sit on top of the skin whatever is happening underneath as far as musculature and how light and shadow effect those surfaces will effect your tattoo rendering.

Not considering these elements will end you up with weird and flat tattoos.

With that said, render your characters skin areas as if there were no intention to have tattoos on it. Shape the muscles and render your highlights and shadows. When you feel comfortable with the outcome you can now begin to add tattoos.

Start the Tat.

I approach the actual tattoo the same way I approach any project with Copic markers by building layers from light to dark.

For this particular reference I began by using a pallet of cool grays starting with C00.

I searched out the faint pencil outlines through the skin of my character and started shading those tattoos. What you’ll notice right away is that what ever is going on underneath automatically shows through the grays.

This helps to make your tattoos look like they are actually sitting on top of the skin making them more believable to the viewer. You’ll want to use a black and grey Copic or Micron multi-liner to tighten up the small details and outlines in your tattoos.

I hope this post helped but if you have any additional questions feel free to ask below.

Your friendly neighborhood marker slinger,

Ivan