Tribal tattoos originate from ancient times and had deep meaning. Nowadays they combine the style of original tribes and modern features. From noting social status and religious beliefs, the tribal tattoo became individual artistic expressions.
Tribal Tattoo Designs That Are Still Gorgeous Today
Usually, you’ll find more tribal tattoos for men online. That is not too surprising since the style is not as delicate as tattoo designs for women. Often, you will find tribal shoulder tattoo or tribal back tattoos, but there are also tribal tattoos inked on other areas of the body. There are so many choices of tribal tattoo designs that it certainly won’t be easy to just settle on a single design!
1. Half Body Tribal Tattoos for Men
Tribal tattoos for men can look amazing when inked on a big scale and with uniform shading just like in the image above. Even when the black ink has faded to look more gray-ish, it still looks amazing.
2. Tribal Back Tattoos
Usually, tribal tattoos for men extend from their arms to their back – the tattoo can expand in any directions that they want.
3. Tribal Tattoo Designs for Women
Typically, where tribal tattoo designs are involved, the designs are a lot smaller and intricate as compared to those on men. You can probably already see the difference from the first two images!
4. Spiralling Tribal Back Tattoos
Tribal tattoos do not need too much of an intricate shading, but this person took the time to include some good dotwork in this piece. That is certainly a matching design to the dotwork, don’t you think?
5. A Smaller Tribal Tattoo Design
It’s fine if you don’t want to commit to a full-sized tribal tattoo. Just go for a smaller design that lies on your arm like a sleeve tattoo – that works too!
6. Tribal Shoulder Tattoo
Most tribal shoulder tattoos also extend to the chest area. Tribal tattoos for men always look good across these two areas. This picture here is just a good example of this fact!
7. Tribal Tattoo for Women – Down the Length of the Body
While it’s true that tribal tattoos are not as common for women, that doesn’t mean that women do not ink tribal tattoos on themselves! This one here features a few repeating curves which make up a bigger tattoo.
8. Just the Thighs and Hips
Tribal tattoos have a very expressive, rich, passionate, and ferocious design. You can usually see animal motifs in the tribal tattoo designs, just like in this tattoo.
9. Cross Design Tribal Shoulder Tattoo
Shoulder tattoo for men can follow a cross design like this one. We love how there is a turtle design cleverly hidden inside this piece. Can you spot it?
10. Shoulder Tribal Tattoo with Inscriptions
Not all shoulder tribal tattoos look the same. In this case, there are some inscriptions to go along with the tribal design, and it looks great!
11. Half Completed Back Tribal Tattoo
This tattoo is an unfinished piece, yet it looks amazing already! It looks like this is a cover up tattoo for another different tattoo design underneath.
12. Arm Tribal Tattoos
Okay, this is one unique design that sort of reminds us of the Mayan tribe. It’s certainly an awesome tribal tattoo design well-suited for the arm areas!
13. Just Along the Shoulders & Neck
This simple tribal tattoo design also has a pair of wings along the side. Perhaps this is a slightly more modern twist to a tribal tattoo design! In any case, the pair of wings do look good with the tattoo.
14. Tribal Tattoo with Lotus
Here’s another different tribal tattoo design which has been personalized with something meaningful to the wearer. What do you think this tattoo represents when there’s a mix of tribal tattoos and lotus flowers?
15. Different Styles & Lines
The tribal tattoos here sport different styles and line thickness. Tribal tattoos for ladies tend to have thinner lines, while those for guys are thicker or more shaded. Such type of body art dates back to over 5000 years ago.
16. Just a Single Strip
Tribal Tattoo with geometric designs on men back
This tribal back tattoo only takes up a small portion of the back instead of taking over the entire back. This is a little atypical when it comes to tribal tattoos for men, but hey, it’s gorgeous too!
It has the biggest variety of style because it depends on the diversity of different cultures and the tribe’s traditions. Initially, they were as an attribute of identification for members of different races and cultures.
17. Like an Armband
As you can see from the previous designs on this page, tribal tattoo designs do well when placed on the arm – in this case, looking like an armband tattoo itself!
Some Interesting Facts from the History
As you have understood the word “tribal” deals with a lot of things in connection to some tribe, so the origin of such kind of tattoos is quite interesting.
18. Tribal Tattoo Design with Ocean Life
Usually, you will see tribal tattoos with black outlines, but this one here is different – it’s outlined in blue! That’s a good color for an octopus though.
19. Celtic-Inspired Tribal Tattoos
This tribal tattoo design here must have taken some inspiration from Celtic tattoo designs. There’s the knots, the cyclic patterns and more!
20. Women’s Tribal Tattoo Down the Thighs
This is known as a Polynesian tattoo design. The difference between tribal tattoos and Polynesian tattoos are very small, it’s sometimes hard to tell them apart!
In ancient time they were used:
As an attribute of belonging to some tribe or social status;
Tribal tattoo with the geometric pattern on the shoulders of men
For men, elements include Aztec culture with symbols of the sun and moon joined together. Back design for women is less massive and includes more modernized elements.
Tribal Aztec tattoo on his chest man – the sun and the moon together
Turtle image
Turtle is a symbol of strength, long life, and wisdom.
Tribal tattoo on shoulder blade guy – Turtle
Shoulder design
For both men and women, made up of different spirals and curves combined in complex design. Small components compose a big design.
They look like a t-shirt and have a very complex design and popular among men. Nowadays it is common to mix thick black lines with thinner black ones. They are combined in shape and forms not necessarily with tribal initial origin and meaning.
What part of the body to chose depends also on the size of a sketch. Size could be small, middle and large. However, even the largest one is the combination of small lines, spirals, circles, etc. Such a tattoo also could stretch from ears to legs.
Men’s tribal tattoos on the body
Most Maori tattoos are done on arms.
Maori tribal tattoo half sleeve guy
Celebrities With Tribal Tattoos
As you can see tribal tattoos have deep symbolical meaning and huge variation. That’ why you should think twice before choosing a design which is better for you. Such tattoos are also famous among celebrities as Mike Tyson,
Tribal tattoo on the face Mike Tyson
Tommy Lee,
Tribal tattoo on the chest of Tommy Lee – the lions
Jamie Foxx
Tribal tattoo on the chest and shoulders of Jamie Foxx
Tattoo Gorilla was launched in 2016, and is the hub of list for tattoo designs and ideas. The ideal site for tattoo addicts who are struggling to find inspiration for their next piece of ink.
