This is fun.
One of my favorite things to do on Midjourney is create tattoo designs. My site is super new, but I've already included small sections that go over Midjourney and the topics I'm about to discuss - tattoo design, combining ChatGPT and Midjourney, and combining Midjourney and Procreate.
ChatGPT
Let's do a quick overview. On ChatGPT, you can put in prompts that you'd like to use, and those prompts will provide outputs that are structured according to the nature of your prompts. So, for example, if you tell ChatGPT that you would like it to write you a blog post in the style of Winnie the Pooh about tattoos, it can do that (no, we do not use AI to write for us). You can then iterate on those prompts. The process of iteration is part of the relatively new field of prompt engineering, by which tech nerds mean manipulating your prompts until you get the desired output. You can continue to work on the questions and instructions you provide the model until it is reliably giving you the responses you are looking for. So, for example, if you're asking it to write you a blog post about tattoos in the style of Winnie the Pooh, but it is continually writing the posts without header tags, or in overly formal language, you can add prompts like "please add markup h1, h2, h3 header tags to the text" and "please write in a more whimsical tone that can be understood by a four-year-old."
Let's apply this to tattoo design. In a moment, we are going to be using the app Midjourney to work on tattoo designs, which we will get to in a moment. We want to use ChatGPT for a couple of things:
Help with the tattoo design itself:
Tattoo ideas
Style concepts
Help crafting the Midjourney prompt:
Descriptive words
Style words
Commands
Parameters
So let's say that we have absolutely no idea what tattoo we want. We can ask ChatGPT, "Can you give me 10 creative ideas for beautiful tattoo designs?"
Here's what it gave me:
Watercolor-style galaxy or space scene, with bright and vivid colors blending together to create a dreamy, otherworldly effect.
A mandala tattoo, incorporating intricate patterns and bold lines to create a striking and eye-catching design.
A minimalist botanical tattoo, featuring a delicate stem or leaf with simple, clean lines that evoke a sense of tranquility and calmness.
A portrait tattoo, capturing the likeness of a loved one or role model in stunning detail and nuance.
A geometric animal tattoo, combining the sharp lines of a geometric design with the natural beauty of an animal shape.
An abstract landscape tattoo, inspired by a favorite location or natural wonder and rendered in bold, vibrant colors.
A traditional Japanese tattoo, featuring detailed images of dragons, koi fish, or other iconic symbols of Japanese culture.
A quote tattoo, featuring a favorite phrase or inspiring message in a beautiful, handwritten font.
A black and white portrait tattoo, evoking the classic style of old-school tattoo art and featuring finely-detailed line work.
A constellation tattoo, featuring the stars and patterns of a favorite zodiac sign or constellation, rendered in a delicate and intricate design.
Watercolor-style galaxy or space scene, with bright and vivid colors blending together to create a dreamy, otherworldly effect.
I'm going to simply ask ChatGPT if it will give me more detail about #1:
This is what it gave me when I asked "Could you give me more detail about #1?":
A watercolor-style galaxy or space scene tattoo typically features vibrant, blended colors that create a dreamy and ethereal effect. The design might include stars, planets, or other celestial objects, and the colors used could range from bright blues and purples to more muted pinks and oranges. The watercolor style involves blending different shades and hues together, creating a sense of movement and depth within the design. This type of tattoo can be executed on a variety of body locations, including the arm, back, or even the leg, and can be either large and intricate or small and simple, depending on your preferences. A watercolor space tattoo can be a beautiful and unique way to express your love for the cosmos and the wonders of the universe.
Once again, awesome. Okay, so now I'm going to ask it to summarize the key elements of this description for me into a prompt that I can feed into Midjourney (we'll get to an explanation of Midjourney in just a minute). A bullet-point list can be helpful if you end up wanting to take out elements for later iterations. "Can you provide the key elements of this description as bullet points?"
And here we go:
Vibrant, blended colors creating a dreamy and ethereal effect
Includes stars, planets, or other celestial objects
Colors used can range from bright blues and purples to muted pinks and oranges
Watercolor style involves blending different shades and hues together
Creates a sense of movement and depth within the design
Can be executed on a variety of body locations, including the arm, back, or leg
Can be either large and intricate or small and simple, depending on preferences
A beautiful and unique way to express your love for the cosmos and the wonders of the universe
Midjourney
Read more about how to use Midjourney on our site here.
Use the Discord app and the /imagine prompt to start creating your designs!
For now, I will say that the real key is putting in vivid and actionable prompts into Midjourney and then upscaling, remixing, varying, and redoing until you get something that really strikes you. Then do it some more. Wait for something surprising and then do it again. The journey that you can go on with this app is truly endless.
So here's what I got when I put in my watercolor-style galaxy or space scene tattoo prompt and did just a few rounds of upscaling, remixing, and redoing:
Not too bad for doing this in literally five minutes! Especially because I didn't come up with the idea, didn't describe it, and didn't do the design work. Now I have some workable mockups to show someone and see what they think of it. If they hate it, I can easily start from scratch and have something totally different in just a few minutes.
Before you start working on refining these images, make sure to get working with your commands and parameters. Some quick cheat codes:
q2 (quality 2) | v4 (version 4) | Image prompt (copy media link) |
q5 (quality 5) | s (stylize, 0-1000) | niji (anime version) |
ar (aspect ratio) | no background | :: (image size ratio) |
hyperrealistic | minimalist | --test --- creative (beta upscale redo) |
as tattoo | /blend | vector |
This is nowhere close to a comprehensive list of commands and parameters.
An absolutely amazing library of information and gorgeous Midjourney tattoo examples and prompt examples can be found on Andre Kovalev's site here.
Putting It All Together with Procreate
A tool that is very popular with tattoo artists for digital design is the Apple product Procreate for iPad (and Procreate Pocket for iPhone).
Now we can take our quality-upscaled tattoo design and start working on it in Procreate!
I'm just going to go ahead and put That Tattoo Guy's entire Procreate Tutorial playlist here, because I think it's that helpful:
I hope that this article has inspired you to start creating some unique designs and to explore AI in new ways. Let us know what you create! Visit: www.promptfreely.com
-- Written by the human writers @ Prompt Freely
Comments