Free Tattoo Patterns

If you take a look at what's available for free and decide you'd rather not take a chance, here's my favorite resource for tattoo patterns and designs that are pretty damn close to free.

Tattoo Johnny: Reason I love Tattoo Johnny? Simple. Very inexpensive designs and every one comes with a matching stencil. Just print it out and take it to the tattoo artist and you're all set.

The third option for finding the perfect tattoo patterns is probably the safest in terms of finding exactly what you want, and that's to buy a membership in one of the online tattoo galleries.

This is where you're going to find the best stuff. You'll pay around 20 bucks for one of these, but in my opinion 20 bucks is never too much to spend on something I'm going to have for the rest of my life.

You'd spend 20 bucks on a couple of pizzas with your buddies, and that's only gonna stay with you for about 24 hours, know what I mean?

The two I personally recommend when people ask me is either Chopper Tattoo or Tattoo Me Now.

Those are the ones I use as well.

Hey, like I said, it's your body. If you'd rather save the $20 and take a chance, be my guest.

Seems like today the whole world is looking for free tattoo patterns. And why not -- the right tattoo starts with the right tattoo pattern. (We've probably all seen ones that started with the WRONG tattoo pattern. And you don't want that now, do you?)

Problem is, tattoo artists are a highly skilled bunch. And, as with any skilled artist, they're not all that juiced about giving their best stuff away for free.

On this page I'll try and go through some of the resources for free and low-cost tattoo patterns to help get you started.

But a word of advice -- that old saying that you get what you pay for is pretty much right on target.

Still, it's your body. So I leave what you do up to you.

Let's hit it.

Okay, let's start with some of the most common sources for free tattoo patterns and styles.

These are going to be websites that will basically give you a book of patterns and drawings for free in exchange for supplying them with your email address and, sometimes, completing some of those "get a free iPod for completing two offers" kind of things.

You can find these anywhere (just search your favorite engine for free tattoo styles, free tattoo designs or free tattoo patterns and you'll come up with a bunch of ads for these sites).

What you'll get is okay. It's not exactly the cutting edge in design, but most of what you'll find in there won't make you look like a freak. (Unless of course that's what you want -- in which case, just about anything will do.)

Another option that not many people are aware of is to visit royalty-free stock photo sites like iStockPhoto or BigStockPhoto and search for "tattoo designs."

You might get hundreds of hits -- and some pretty nice stuff too.

Now, this stuff will cost you. But it's dirt-bag cheap. You can download around 10 patterns for about $12. (That's a little over a buck a pattern for you drop-outs.)

CAUTION: If you're planning on just surfing around the Web until you find something you like, and then printing it out and taking it to your local shop, you should know that most of what you'll find online is copyrighted, and both you and the dude who inks you can be prosecuted for using it. It's rare, but I have heard of it happening. Just giving you the info -- you do what you want with it.

I just found this site and am freakin' blown away by the quality of this flash.

It's called Tattoodles.

I'm going to be looking around for some samples to upload here soon, but for now you should head over there and check out their gallery for yourself.

(You can even send a tattoo e-postcard to a friend! Cool stuff.)

Check out their gallery right here!