Generation Guide
Get pro-level tattoo designs, every time
StenGen turns an idea into a clean tattoo design or a ready-to-use stencil. This guide shows you exactly how to write prompts, which style to pick, how to mix them, and how to squeeze the most out of the AI Prompt Helper. Read it once and your results jump.
The two tools
AI Tattoo Generator — you describe a design in words and get an original tattoo sketch. Choose up to a few styles, and it renders a clean design on a white background, centered and ready to be turned into a stencil.
Stencil Extractor — upload a finished design (yours or one from the generator) and get a clean line-work stencil you can print and use on skin. There's a Default mode for most images and a Pro mode for trickier ones.
The workflow most artists use: generate a design → refine the prompt until it's right → send it through the Stencil Extractor.
Writing a great prompt
A strong prompt describes five things. You don't need fancy words — just be specific:
- Subject: what it is and its pose or state — 'a coiled snake', 'a roaring lion's head'.
- Details: the defining features — scales, mane texture, cracks, jewelry, flowers.
- Mood / aesthetic: dark and gothic, delicate and minimal, bold traditional…
- Shading / detail level: fine-line and airy, or dense and hyper-detailed.
- Composition: centered, vertical, framed by leaves — how it sits on the page.
Example
Weak: “a wolf tattoo”
Strong: “a geometric wolf head, sharp angular facets, piercing eyes, dark gothic mood, dense fine detail, centered composition”
Every design should read as a tattoo, so the generator always keeps it a clean design on a white background, centered — you don't need to add that yourself, but you can steer the composition.
Lettering: if you want exact words inked, put them in quotes — e.g. “Não Tenhas Medo”. They'll be reproduced exactly, in their original language and script.
Every style & its best weight
Each style is a trained model (a “LoRA”). You can also generate with no style for the raw, neutral base look. Here's what each one is best at, and a good starting weight.
StenGen Basic
70–85%The universal black & grey default.
Best for: Almost any subject when you just want a clean, safe, professional B&W design. Start here if you're unsure.
💡 This is your safest first attempt. If a design comes out too plain, raise the weight or mix in Realism for depth.
Simple Lora
40–70%Light, clean linework.
Best for: Minimalist and fine-line pieces — a few elements, lots of negative space, delicate lines.
💡 Lower the weight for the most delicate results. Great for small tattoos, wrist/finger pieces, single-line concepts.
Realism v1
60–85%Detailed, smooth shading.
Best for: Portraits, animals, objects that need depth and realistic gradients.
💡 Pair with a detail-rich prompt. Realism rewards specific descriptions of texture, light and material.
Realism v2
60–90%Stronger, more cinematic realism.
Best for: Hyper-detailed, dramatic pieces — skulls, lions, dense compositions with strong lighting.
💡 Our go-to for anything that should look intense and dimensional. If it's too busy, drop the weight a little.
Dotwork / Whipshading
55–80%Stipple and needle-shading texture.
Best for: Sacred geometry, mandalas, and designs where you want grainy, hand-shaded gradients instead of smooth ones.
💡 A different shading language than Realism. Use it when the texture itself is part of the style.
Neo Tribal
55–80%Bold black shapes, modern tribal.
Best for: Strong graphic pieces, blackwork, flowing tribal-modern shapes.
💡 Keep the prompt about form and flow rather than fine detail — this style is about silhouette.
Cartoon
55–80%Bold, playful, illustrative.
Best for: Fun, character-driven designs. Works in both black & grey and color.
💡 Add 'bold outlines' or 'clean cel shading' to the prompt to push the cartoon look.
Color v1
60–85%Traditional / neo-traditional color.
Best for: Color pieces — traditional roses, neo-trad animals, anything where you name a palette.
💡 Say the colors you want in the prompt (e.g. 'deep red and gold'). You can also get color with no style at all.
Mixing styles & LoRA weights
The weight is how strongly a style pushes the result — think of it as a volume knob from 0 to 100%. Higher = more of that style's character; lower = subtler.
- Start a new idea at around 80%. If it looks over-stylized, drop to 50–60%.
- Delicate / minimal pieces almost always look better at a lower weight.
- You can combine a couple of styles — e.g. Realism for the detail + a touch of Dotwork for texture. Keep one as the lead and the other lower.
- If two styles fight each other, lower both or remove one. More styles is not automatically better.
Using the AI Prompt Helper
Not sure how to phrase something? Open the Prompt Helper (the sparkles button in the generator). Describe your idea in plain language — even in your own language — and it writes several polished prompt variants for you.
- Type or tap the mic and speak your idea — the transcription drops into the box for you to edit before sending.
- You get a few flavored variants (e.g. Realism, Minimalist, Dark, Color). Tap “Use” on the one you like and it fills the prompt for you.
- It always includes the tattoo essentials, so you can focus on the idea, not the boilerplate.
- Treat its output as a starting point — tweak a word or two to make it yours, then generate.
Getting clean stencils
The Stencil Extractor turns a design into printable line work. For the cleanest result:
- Use a clear, high-contrast image — a clean design on a white background works best (exactly what the generator produces).
- Default mode handles most designs. Switch to Pro mode if the lines come out too heavy, broken, or noisy.
- Very busy or low-contrast photos are the hardest — simplify the source first if you can.
Aspect ratios
Pick the shape that fits where the tattoo will go. Tall pieces (forearm, spine, calf) suit a portrait ratio like 3:4 or 9:16; square works for a balanced, self-contained design; wider ratios suit chest or collarbone pieces. Choosing the right ratio up front saves you from awkward cropping later.
Ready to create?
Put the guide to work — describe your idea and watch it become a design in seconds.