Awesome 3D Tattoo Designs

Insect Tattoo

Regardless of whether you’d like a 3D tattoo or not, they for sure catch your eye immediately. The stunning hyper-realistic looks will twist your mind and make you want to go and touch them, just to make sure they’re real.

What you’re about to see might spark your passion for 3D tattoos.

So, what is 3D tattoo?

3D tattoos are one of the most difficult tattoos to ink. They require great artist skill, good knowledge about form, shading, and anatomy. Tattooists, who specialize in 3D tattoo art, firstly need to be skilled artists. 3D tattoos use a lot of effects to imitate the real object and make it pop-out. Some techniques to create amazing 3D effect are drop shadows, highlighting blanks, different thickness of the outline or sometimes lack of outlines.

3d tattoos realistic
Tattoo master works in black sterile gloves

The shading in 3D tattoos is the most important touch. The richer the shading is, the more realistic the tattoo looks like. Artists use the shading and colors to build the forms and this is the reason why they must be extremely precise. You should not trust your skin to someone lacking good skills, just because you want a 3D tattoo today. 3D tattoos done badly will spoil the good effect and turn your tattoo into disaster.

3D in Art

We believe it’ll be useful to know where 3D appears in art, to give you, even more, ideas for tattoos. 3D, out of the context of digital art is a technique used by most commonly street artists. They paint extraordinary and realistic murals or chalk street drawings, which literally trick your brain.  To be successful in 3D art, an artist needs deep knowledge about perspective and color illusions to achieve the clever eye-tricking effects.

3d tattoos realistic

Popular 3D tattoo designs

Some of the most popular subjects are hyper-realistic eyes with reflections and light blanks. You can find stunning designs with both human and animal eyes.

Skulls and horror themes are highly used in 3D tattoo art. Because they need strong realistic depiction to actually look scary, the 3D tattoo style is perfect for horror tattoos. Biomechanical tattoos are also always inked using 3D effects. Tattoos showing bones, metal parts, cables and torn skin become even more frightening with such realistic technique.

In you prefer something more calming and sweet, go for 3D food tattoos, butterflies or ribbons.