Realistic Doll Tattoos

I hear that dusting a doll tat with fleshtone or white pastel before sealing will help it look more natural.

I would also say that using a dark grey or a blue-tinged grey for the linework would help the black look more natural, as well.

 

I agree that most "tattoos" put on dolls just don't look like tattoos because pure pigment has been used. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone do one using muted tones or pastels - which I think might be the best method since they are not opaque and will allow some of the doll's "skintone" to show through.

I haven't tried any yet myself, though I do have some planned, so I think I'll be watching this thread to get ideas

I am going to be using the decal method for one of my dolls, but in this case it's a situation where I don't need or want it to look "authentic" so it's no problem...though I'll still probably mute the colors.

 

I havn't tried this but was wondering...what if you [most likely have to do this backwards]...did watercolor pencils as the lines...with dark grey/dusty blue or what not to make sure the sealer doesn't make the lines too bright, and chalk pastel dusting as the 'fill in' color? I might try it with my doll's headcap...

 

Personally, I use a great deal of pastel and watercolour pencil for all the tattoo's I do. To my eye, paint is too harsh and solid a pigment to look real and whilst it can be tricky to get the thing to blend into the "skin" if you will, the best method I've discovered is indeed to put a layer of skintone pastel over the whole thing when it's sealed so that it doesn't stand too proud.

***EDITED TO ADD***
MSC over the top of watercolour pencil will soften it somewhat because it's essentially a liquid hitting it, so the line you draw will become less harsh when sealed

Everyone will tell you a different method, it's essentially like faceups, everyone has their own way of doing things and tends to stick to it

I also don't use black as an outline unless the tattoo's are meant to be very fresh, usually, I stick with muted blues (These are also on a VERY white skin doll, so they show far more than they would on NS.):


You can also tint with pastel colours if you want a sort've faded, old tattoo look:



Or alternatively if you want the tattoo to look relatively new, just use the watercolour pencils and blend them with a DAMP brush:


Hope that helped!

 

I agree with the use of pastels or watercolor pencils. Paint is just too opaque, as are, I find, the decals.

Here's one I did on Caldera, my Sooah/Twiglimbs2 hybrid. Pay no mind to the weird shadows, please!

 

Thank you It's a combination of freehand and some traced outline, it depends on what I'm doing tbh. The swallows, pretty much, I can freehand now after doing so many of them, the phoenix became freehand when I just went nuts on it too but the hideously complex sleeve and back piece on my El up there, I had to put it all together first and then trace the outline on so I could get the proportions right...I'm SO not that good freehand LOL

 

Yeah a bit of rubbing, but I've been careful not to move that arm if I'm not posing her for photos (for instance, I bend the other arm to get her into shirts or whatever).

 

Koi pondering did a sakura blossoms tattoo thats simply stunning~


her thread: http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281117

 

Sher's Siobhan has a very realistic tattoo....I'm not sure of the materials though.

 

I would say that's possibly airbrush work which is also a pretty good alternative and allows you to use paint without the usually solid nature

 

I'm really glad this thread was started--it's helped me give one of my girls the tattoo she's been wanting. I don't have a camera, so I can't take a pic right now (not that it's a thrilling example of tattooyness being a first try and all). However, I can report that the pastel was really great to use--easy to control, nice colors, and no unwanted texture. I've seen a lot of pics of doll tattoos that have lovely designs, but are too textured/thick looking which was my main concern.

 

I love the design of the turrets and stars!

My only concern were I doing that lettering would be getting it to stay in relative proportion when you reach the dip beneath the collar bone. That's a particularly tricky bit of body to work on I've found, it's awkward to get into without the pencil slipping even if you have a traced outline, so you may need extra care with that, but the designs are awesome

I find it helpful for scale to sketch out the designs on tracing paper and overlay them onto the body so I can get a rough idea of angles and any awkward spots before I start, that might be worth a shot with the bit under the collar bone

Hope that helped a bit, this is such an interesting post I keep getting sucked back in because I'm tattooing dolls all the time! lol

 

I apologize if this has been stated and I just missed it, but when you say you use markers for the outlines, what kind of markers do you use and where can they be purchased? Thanks! All these awesome tats make me want to ink some of my boys!

 

The only thing about the pen i guess is that i would worry about it being a little perminate, those pens sometimes tend to be lightproof, fadeproof, waterproof and so on.

Watercolor pencil: not a problem really, i use it to do my drawing, so i at least know where things were going to go. I tried to use them here, but i didnt like that they didnt seem strong enough, when i work on another one, he will have that look because this makes it look much older
like

Markers: again I wouldnt use markers, theres too many what-ifs with it staining and what not

Pastels: This is an example of using pastels to color. Outline was painted in acrylic.


Dyes/henna/etc.: Again I wouldnt use these as they are dyes and will stain your doll probably, people use henna to dye their hair. I used acrylic and shimmer powder



X's tattoo isnt really a tattoo but a marking/birthmark thing, thats why his is black, as well as his brothers

and of course Dmitri - and because i love russian tattoos. I used acrylic and mixed blue and black together. You can see the thread here. His are really only about three years old, so i dont think they would fade too much, and his one phrase arm, and the compase were done with black to show those were newer - sadly he must be redone >_> all of him, perhaps next time i might use a little more blue.

 

I'm really loving this piece!

I think the crows are gorgeous and I still love the other arm piece. I especially like how that vine-like tendril crosses onto the torso. It really connects things together ^_^.

 

Those are really cool looking, you did a good job!

I have a question though; if you use a stencil to transfer your image onto the doll before coloring it and all of that would you have to use anything to get it to transfer on to the resin?

 

As some other people have brought up- you really have to be careful with staining- even with acrylic. An option aside from pencils or acrylic is to use wet pastel. This would probably give the more natural feel that a lot of people are trying to get. It's a tricky mix to get the right water to pastel ration, but the important things to bear in mind is that it dries darker than it goes on but it still has that light transparency in the end. You'll need a brush that is good at holding liquid for this and you basically soak in the mixture through the bristles before you put the brush to the resin. It's not something I've mastered, but I have a friend who uses that process for face-ups.

I suppose I should post me work here as reference- even though I outline in acrylic. My black lines are likely darker than called for here, but the would be easy enough to lighten up with a little grey/blue and skin tone in the black~ the coloring I used pastel for. In the first tattoo I did the pastel before the ink and in the next one I reversed that process. It's far easier in my mind now to get the lines down and then color inside.

phoenix falling on a MSD split torso. This photo was a year or two old and was my second tattoo


this one was done on a soom tiny torso- but it's been ruined since the start- you can see the smudging on lower right. that doll is just trouble


this is just an in progress of the commission I'm currently working - he'll wrap all around the back and onto the other side and is on a delf 3 torso

 

circe-nausicca: Somewhat, but not really. I mean if you use paper like what is used to give a person a tattoo would you need to have put something on the area of the doll you want the tattoo to be to get the outline to transfer onto the doll?

I can't really explain what I'm trying to ask.

 

circe-nausicca: thank you~ and I figured that the pastels might work better for what a lot of people are thinking. I'm much more confident with acrylic so I stick to them. Here's the thread of the person who uses that for her face-ups. Basically at this point everything is pastel that she uses so in the lashes you can get a good idea of how it looks- dark but a little transparent. Usually it's a mix of black and brown and maybe a little purple.

 

Good Job! I love the phoenix

 

I think that doing this would make the tattoo look super old. I hate looking at tattoos that have faded this much. It's a good idea to make it look older if that's what you're going for, but from personal experience of looking at tattoos, yeeeaaah. It shows that the artist didn't do a good job with the lining of your tattoo at all. You're gonna want more of a lighter black than anything. Grey would look really fake for a tattoo line.

Putting white pastel over something would make it look more natural because tattoos DO fade out. HOWEVER! If you're working with a tanned doll, you're gonna need to make the tattoos darker in general. You're going to need to find the flesh tone and go over it with that same flesh tone. I hope that my personal real life tattoo experience helps out. I can post pictures of my tattoos to show what I mean later. I'll show my tanned skin versus my pale skin. I can also show fresh tattoo vs aged tattoo.

 

Wow thank you! This tutorial was very helpful and I must say that your work is truely amazing! I can see that alot of effort was put in into making your doll's tattoo look as realistic as possible

About half a year ago, I tried to draw on a full sleeve on my doll using a similar method that a really tattoo artist had done (I wasn't really inked; he just used alcohol and a marker) to my arm for a certain cosplay event.

I ended up with this:



Six being the guy who's tattoo I was drawing after;
Seven being me, whose sleeve was drawn on my a tattoo artist using a marker;
And the last one, being my doll ^^;;

So the thread starter used pastels for shading? Because the method I used was to colour the entire arm in black watercolour pencil, then use water to smear it (this was similar to what the tattoo artist did to me arm - he drew alot of random straight lines across my arm and then rubbed achohol to give the shading effect). Though the shading is visible, I was not able to entirely cover the whole arm.

I kinda had the same believes as the thread starter - I wasn't into using paints for my doll's tattoo because it will give the "just tattoo-ed" effect. I have a real tattoo on myself as well so I know how it looks like when a tattoo was just inked. It's all shiny and stands out pretty sharply (kinda looks like those rub on tattoos if you ask me), but after the skin starts to heal, the "glow" of the tattoo then fades, leaving behide a matt inked on effect.

I am looking into re-doing my boy's tattoo because it wasn't very well done the first time

But I still have problems with my drawings. You see... I can't draw very well and I do have shaky hands ^^;; So I tend to make alot of mistakes. And most of the time, I can't erase these mistakes completely because they're such thin and fine lines... So my doll's tattoo has alot of these mistakes that are still somewhat present. Kind of like when you try and erase part of your drawing that is on paper but there are still these "pencil marks" left behind.

Another tattoo replica I did (it's not very professional though I know >.<):




Apparently, I still have problems with MSC and it didn't work well on this tattoo for me. There's sort of a hole somewhere there because the MSC wouldn't dry evenly and it started to break

I still have another arm to think about and that arm is full of colour I think colour is going to be a challenge for me. I've never been too good at colouring ^^;;

 

I love these ideas too! Thanks for asking the question and for all the great posts!

 

Okay, so I got down to re-doing my "Die A Rocker" tattoo for my boy. This time I decided that my boy's tattoos will be Six inspired so I did not to do an exact replica.

I used normal colour pencils this time instead of water colour pencils and I find that they work better for word art. They retain the shape and outline of the words better. Whereas with water colour pencils, when the MSC touches the lines, they tend to blur out a little. Though it makes the lines look softer, but there's risk of uneven "spreading" (sorry, I don't know the actual term to use here ^^;.

This was the original input planned, but I kinda screwed up and smudged a few lines that I think couldn't be saved because I might just end up erasing alot of the work off and leaving an even bigger smudge



So I shaded around abit with colour pencil:



Without flash:



This also happened to be my first time trying to body-blush! I think it turned out pretty nice for a first attempt but there's still lots of room for improvement

I must say that it is REALLY REALLY hard work to draw details of a tattoo with really unsteady fingers / hands =w=

I wonder how do people do it... Because I'm planning to do a prose on another of my boy's back and I think coloured pencils will be too "fat" for the job. I haven't tried working with paints yet. Is it harder to control than a pencil?

 

I was kinda happy I found this thread, since it helped with the confidence of doing the tattoos for my doll... I myself am on the fence between acrylics and pastels...
I kinda like the pastels for the softer feel, but like acrylic for the somewhat bolder colors....

I myself starting trying to see if I could find a middle ground that worked the best of both...and so far this is one of the results based on a mixture I make combining acrylic with chalk pastel mixed in water. The chalk is scraped/shaved into the acrylic/water mixture. I also add a small bit of talc (baby powder) to it as well...

My initial sketch designs on paper: http://raijimagiwind.deviantart.com/art/Icarus-Tattoo-Concepts-150922505

Here's what I got with it so far:


In this case I first gave him a coat of MSC then did the pencil work with dark gray colored pencils and a #2 pencil. Sealed that with MSC.
I made a mixture about slightly thicker then ink (not by too much though), using water, a small amount (probably about one to two small pencil eraser sized globs) of black acrylic, then shaved about roughly 1/8 (maybe less) of a teaspoon worth each of black (less of the black though), dark blue, light blue, and white chalk pastels into it. I also added about 1/16 of a teaspoon of talc (baby powder) as well. Mixed it all real well with a stirring stick.
You don't need to load the brush very heavy with it either. You can probably adjust the coloring to lighter with more white and light blue pastel...
If you load the brush just enough it gives you a line similar to ink, but will go a distance too. I got most of the arm tattoo done with only one dipping of the brush. Depending on how dark your going, you may want to do a second coat.

It seemed to work quite well and if a little smears (or if you accidentally get some on your hand and a little gets on a part you aren't doing) you can use a lightly rough piece of paper towel or a rag with a little rubbing alcohol to remove, till you seal with MSC. Or even an art eraser. It dries relatively quick too...I then used a small bit of talc powder mixed with a flesh based color chalk pastel, shaved into it to dust it with a loaded brush barely damp...to tone down the design and look a little worn...but not too much...

The final mixture ratio is still something to work on, but it also depends on how light or dark your going with a black tattoo design...

I shall continue to watch for more news and thoughts on the subject, but also continue to record progress on this mixture as well.

 

wow, everyones tattoo is super nice!~
i enjoy looking at them lol

 

these tattoos do add a lot of character to the dolls thats for sure!!i especialy love the blue tatto by Lulu..can i have one on me haha?!

 

wow, that's some nice ink work :P It's giving me inspiration to finally finish Gabriel's tattoos...

 

I love everyone's tattoos...You guys are intimidating this newb

 

I gave up trying to draw the full sleeve ^^;;;

It doesn't help if you can't draw

It seems that I only have the ability to do only text at the moment, so I'm going to commission someone to do graphics for me

 

i´m so impressed by everyone...
lovely tattoos... some of them looks so real.. awesome job.

 

I love all your tattoos...I'd like to make tattoos to my doll, but I don't draw well, so it can be a problem.

 

I now worship you and will most certainly return when I work up the nerve to tattoo Kaitou.
...That, or when I inexorably up-screw his designs. ...>>

 

That is some amazing tattoo work! I'm an artist as well, but I am going the lazy route, temporary Ed Hardy tattoos and a trusty can of MSC UV cut. :P

 

Wow, you guys are all so skilled. There so pretty. Love them all!

 

Wow, this is super interesting. I've done several tattoo's on both of my boys and a couple of commissions as well - I've tried going for teh faded, ligher look, but then to me it just looks unfinihsed so I end up darkening them anyway. xD Maybe I'll try the white pastels over them.

Anyway, here are a couple of mine:









I'm actually working on several more for Prophet right now, so I'll have to check back in and let you guys know how the pastel over works!

 

I finally did the other tattoo's - I tried doing white pastel, but again, I dind't like the soft look. xD I dunno, I must jsut be weird.

 

I have pictures!
Watercolour pencils and pastels. All of these are on BBB/RS (paper) white skin dolls, so they're very bright.
The first one's on a tiny, so the photograph isn't the best... >>

 

this looks incredibly helpful ^^
I am planning on doing a celtic knot/floral torso type thing for a distant future 1/3 boy- this will probably be with black/gray ink etc.
what would be a good material for this? Because it would require some serious details- and I fear staining/messing up XD

 

oh my god all these tattoos are absolutely amazing, i am so jealous of your amazing skills!! All your designs are so beautiful and realistic! Your dolls are very lucky to have such great owners!

 

These are great.
I've also seen people use temporary tattoos, but like some of you have mentioned, they tend to look a little on the bright side.

So do you think watercolor pencils, and pastels alone are bright enough, without looking too faded? Or is an acrylic outline necessary?

 

I just finished up a retro-nautical one for my slim mini girl's upper arm:

Original outline, before coloring​

I do admit it is an acrylic outline, but it definitely softened when I started coloring in with pastels and watercolor pencils. I really like how it turned out, I'm planning a whole bunch more nautical-themed tattoos for my girl.

 

Absolutely amazing! It looks so realistic.

 

wow,the taboo u made are just so fantastic~~so gorgoeus~~!!XDDD

 

It's so pretty >< I've always wished to draw a tattoo up, but I'm scared of killing it lol

 

ohhh I definatley need to tattoo my boy, he's supposed to have one on the back of his neck...maybe I should put it sumwhere else?

 

wow these are amazing and so beautiful great job : )