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to do just about anything on skin.

Try to find your inspiration in your own taste and interests. If you like art nouveau vases, use them as reference. If you like wild animals, find some photographs of animals you find meaningful. Or simply look for shapes, motifs, and colors that you like.

Finding an overall "look" for your tattoo is just as important as finding a certain subject-not all art is deeply meaningful. Some is purely visual in its appeal. Deciding if your tattoo has to speak a symbolic meaning, or if it's decorative, can take you a long way toward a subject matter (or lack of one).

Find an artist. The first artist you should think of, of course, is the one who you will be paying for the tattoo. Find a tattoo artist whose artwork you like, and allow them freedom to design something for you.

You can't walk in and just offer them your skin, usually, but most tattoo artists enjoy creating fine art. A great number of tattoo artists went to art school and tattoo to express their artistic sensibility. Many of them will even charge a bit less if they are creating their own work, rather than being used as a copy machine for the skin.

By looking online at different artists' portfolios and websites, and visiting shops and studios to see their art in person, you may find someone whose work you enjoy enough to simply give them free rein with or without limits. You should always get tattooed by someone you trust, whose other tattoos look good to you (whether or not you would wear them).

If you are anxious about buying their artwork and wearing it, perhaps you should continue your search for an artist and find someone whose aesthetic sensibilities you trust. Asking a tattoo artist what their artistic influences are can be very helpful in this. If you both like a lot of the same artwork, you may have similar taste and similar ideas of what looks right.

You should always get something that fits the flow and form of the body part it's being applied to, and a good artist will explain this to you in your choice of design. Harsh geometric designs don't work in most areas of the body, because they are distorted by movement. With straight lines and perfectly round designs this becomes highly noticeable and makes the tattoo look bad. Symmetrical art only works well on the center line of the body; along the spine or on the center of the torso, where it won't be distorted by underlying structures.

Designs with lots of tiny lines that are close together also don't usually work unless

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