Recently, almost every tattoo request I’ve received includes the client’s very own Ai-generated design. Some of these are pretty helpful for getting your thoughts together—especially when you know I’ll be creating my own final design based on it. Others want me to stay pretty close to what the Ai generated.
The main problems with relying entirely on Ai designs are:
First, Ai has a very distinct “look” that makes it instantly recognizable. While Ai is great at combining a list of ideas into one image, despite all its “intelligence,” it doesn’t understand good style, composition, balance, flow, or—most importantly—value and readability. Usually, it creates a cluttered mess of detail that is hard to read from a distance. It also tends to make elements far too small to ever be properly tattooed.
Second, if you ask Ai to design a “sleeve,” it doesn’t realize the design needs to wrap all the way around your arm. Instead, it packs every single idea onto the outer arm from the photo you uploaded.
Third, and worst of all, Ai will do exactly what you ask with total disregard for the laws of physics and human anatomy. If it needs to elongate your arm, chest, or neck to cram everything in, it will do just that. Unfortunately, I can’t stretch your body to make all those ideas fit!
So, do I use Ai? Yes, I do!
There are several ways Ai has made my job easier and helped me create better custom designs for you.
The biggest advantage, in my opinion, is uniqueness. You no longer have to worry about how many other people have the exact same stock photo tattooed on them, or seeing a face from your meaningful heritage piece show up in a TV commercial. With Ai, I generate all my own custom photo references, so your tattoo isn’t just another face found on Pinterest.
Speaking of portraits: clients often don’t have high-quality photos of their loved ones. The pictures are frequently blurry, out of focus, taken from an awkward angle, or poorly lit. With Ai, I can fix those lighting and focus issues while keeping the likeness spot on.
Another huge benefit involves major reference adjustments. My biggest pet peeve used to be when a client would look at a piece—like a St. Michael I spent hours building—and say, “This is perfect, but can we rotate his body, head, and hand position a little bit?” It was as if I’d taken a photo of a friend in the back room and could just ask him to pose differently for a quick retake—rather than redrawing a complex, detailed figure from scratch. Now, making those kinds of pose and angle adjustments to a reference is fast and seamless.
I’m sharing all of this to show that there are pros and cons to Ai, and we’re all learning learning on the job here;)
Yes, I will happily look at your Ai-generated designs, but please don’t be offended when I redesign your tattoo using my years of real-world tattooing experience—something Ai simply doesn’t have. That’s what you hired me for.
On the flip side, please don’t be turned off that I use Ai as part of my process. I do not—and cannot—use Ai to generate an entire final tattoo. If I did, it wouldn’t turn out any better than what I get from clients. Instead, I use it as a powerful tool (like a limitless, custom image search) to generate individual elements, which I then combine, draw, paint over, and refine into a cohesive design.
It’s also an incredible tool for testing options near the end of the design process—like asking it to show me three different background colors, or shifting the light source from the upper right to the lower left. Re-lighting a complex design with dozens of layers manually would take hours if even possible, but testing it digitally lets us quickly see what adds the most drama and continuity to your piece.
I hope this helps give some insight into how Ai fits into modern custom tattoo work.
And yes—this article was edited and proofread with Ai. Thanks for reading!
For more tattoo tips or to view my latest custom projects, check out the portfolio here at brianulibarri.com/tattoos
Now tattooing at Real Gone Denver
