How to Brief a Tattoo Artist: References, Sizing and What Not to Send

The quality of a custom tattoo is decided long before the machine is switched on. It is decided in the brief: the handful of images and sentences you give your artist to work from. A good brief gets you a design that feels like it was made for you. A vague one gets you a polite guess, two rounds of changes, and a piece that is nobody's fault and nobody's favourite. Here is how to write a good one.

Send references, and say what each one is for

Three to eight images is the sweet spot. Fewer and the artist is guessing; more and the signal disappears into noise. What makes references useful is the labelling, telling the artist what you want taken from each one.

• Subject: what the tattoo is of. A photo of the actual animal, plant, object or place, not someone's drawing of it.
• Style: how it should be rendered, meaning line weight, shading, and colour or black and grey. Your artist's own portfolio is the best source here.
• Mood: the feeling. Dark and heavy, soft and botanical, bold and graphic. One or two images is plenty.
• Placement: photos of tattoos on the same body part at roughly the size you are imagining, so you and the artist share a scale.

A line like 'the pose from image 1, the shading style from image 2, sized like image 3' is worth more than twenty saved posts with no comment.

What not to send

Do not send another artist's finished tattoo and ask for that exact tattoo. Two reasons, and the second is the one that matters to you. First, copying another artist's custom work for their client is a straightforward professional wrong, and the artists you want to book will decline it. Second, that design was drawn for someone else's body, at their proportions, in a style its maker had spent years developing. It will not fit you the same way.

Send it as a style reference instead. Say 'this feel, this line weight, my subject', and you get something better and yours. If you genuinely want a ready-made design you can walk in and get, that is what flash is for, and there is nothing lesser about it.

Also skip: AI-generated images as a literal target. They are fine for mood, but they routinely contain anatomy and structure that cannot be built as a real tattoo, and they do not account for how a design has to hold together once lines soften.

Give real numbers and a real photo

Small, medium and decent-sized mean nothing across two people. Measure the space in centimetres, or hold a tape against your arm and photograph it. Fifteen centimetres on a forearm is a different tattoo from ten, and it is the difference between detail that survives and detail that closes up.

Send a clear, well-lit photo of the placement, including any existing tattoos, scars or moles nearby. Artists design around what is already there. If the area has old work in it, say so up front, because that shifts the conversation towards rework or cover-up territory.

Say your budget out loud

The most useful sentence in any brief is the one people find hardest to write. An artist can design to a budget by changing scale and detail density, or by working black and grey instead of colour, but only before they draw. Told afterwards, the only options are cutting the design or postponing it.

Nobody thinks less of you for having a number. Our rates and how quoting works are on the pricing page.

Be clear about what is fixed and what is not

Tell your artist which parts are non-negotiable, whether that is a date, a name, a specific flower or a particular animal, and which parts you are happy to leave to them. This single distinction is what makes a designer's job possible. Total freedom with a hidden requirement is the worst brief in existence, because the requirement only surfaces when the drawing is finished.

Where a piece carries meaning, say so plainly. It changes what an artist chooses to emphasise and what they are willing to move.

What happens after you send it

Drawing happens before your appointment, on the artist's own time, and it is part of what the piece costs. Expect to see the design shortly before the session rather than the week you book. Artists draw close to the date so the work is fresh and the queue stays honest.

One round of changes is normal and expected. Adjusting size, flipping an element, thickening a line, moving a focal point: all fine, all part of the process. What is not workable is redesigning the concept at the second draft, because that is a new commission, not a revision.

On the day, stencil placement is a collaboration. Stand up, move, look in the mirror, and say if it sits wrong. Ten minutes of adjusting the stencil is time well spent. That is the last moment anything is free to change.

A brief that works, in six lines

• Subject: what it is, in one sentence.
• Placement and size: body part, orientation, measured in centimetres, with a photo.
• Style: black and grey or colour, and which of the artist's pieces you are pointing at.
• References: three to eight images, each labelled with what you want from it.
• Fixed elements: what must be in it, and what you are leaving to the artist.
• Practicalities: budget, any deadline, and anything medical the artist should know.

Bring that to a free consultation and you will walk out with a real quote and a plan. See how our custom tattoo process runs, look at the artists to find the right hand for your idea, then book a consultation.