Black & grey
StenGen Basic · 55%
Name the composition, the mood, and what you do NOT want. The closing list of negatives keeps the background clean and stencil-ready.
Made with StenGen
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The comparison
The same rose, every style
Prompt: “single rose design”. One style at a time, strength 80%. Tap any thumbnail.
08 / 10
Dark Ghost
Smoke, ash and dissolve
Weight40–60%
Builds form byTexture carries the form
Edges are eaten away and the form dissolves into wisps, black bleeding down the stem, grain like charcoal dust. Atmospheric — and hungry: at full strength it eats the detail you asked for.
Best for Ethereal, haunted and decay-themed pieces where the subject should half-disappear.
Run it lower than the other styles. Above roughly 60% it starts swallowing the subject instead of dressing it.
Generate ×4. These two came out of one run — same prompt, same style, same weight. A style is a direction, not a fixed result, so give it room to offer you options.
The idea worth keeping
Four ways to build a shape
Ten styles is a lot to remember. Four is not. Every style builds a form in one of these ways — name the one you want and the choice makes itself.
Line carries the form
A closed outline does the work; whatever sits inside it is secondary. Fastest to tattoo and the safest to age — the contour holds the shape long after soft grey has settled.
Simple LoraNeo TribalColor v1StenGen v2
Tone carries the form
Almost no outline. Petals, muscle and bone are sculpted by the jump from white highlight to solid black. Needs real skill with soft gradients, and rewards it.
StenGen BasicRealism v1Realism v2
Texture carries the form
The shape emerges out of grain, brush wash or smoke. The surface itself is the style — you are not drawing an edge, you are building density.
Dotwork / WhipshadingDark Ghost
Flat planes carry the form
Everything is cut into flat shapes with hard borders. The least detail, the most impact from across a room.
Cartoon
What a style actually is: a model trained on a body of tattoo work until it learned that look (a “LoRA”). Pick none and you get the raw engine — flat on a vague prompt, often the cleanest result on a precise one. Stack up to three: one leads, the others season.
The dial nobody explains
Weight, watched live
Same prompt, same style — Dark Ghost — at four strengths. Drag it and watch the texture arrive, then eat the design.
Drag it
30%
The sweet spot
The subject still holds — proper leaves, a real stem — but tendrils creep off the petals and ash starts to speckle the edges. Character without losing the design.
Same prompt, same style, four strengths. Weight is not a quality slider — it decides how much of the design belongs to you and how much belongs to the style.
Rule of thumb: start a new idea at 80%. Looks over-stylized? Drop to 50–60. Dark Ghost is the exception — run it at 40–60% from the start.
The part people miss
The prompt styles it too
Both of these ran with no style selected at all. The only difference is two extra words.
“single rose design”
Thin, tentative line, small subject floating on the page. Nothing is wrong with it — there is just nothing in the prompt pushing it anywhere.
“single rose design, gothic dark”
Two words later: heavy blackwork, cathedral tracery, a dark red heart, a cross of thorns. Same engine, no style, different piece.
The anatomy of a strong prompt
Hover the parts
Weaka wolf tattoo— six more words turn it into this:
a geometric wolf head, sharp angular facets, piercing eyes, dark gothic mood, dense fine detail, centered composition
Lettering: put the exact words in quotes — e.g. “Não Tenhas Medo” — and they come back reproduced exactly, in their original language and script.
One muse, three goals
Medusa, three ways
The same subject taken to three different destinations: clean black & grey, a two-style mix for realism, and full color. Read what changes between the prompts — that difference is the craft.
Two styles mixed
Realism v1 · 40%StenGen Basic · 80%
Realism carries the skin and scales, Basic holds the structure. The leading style takes the LOWER weight — it flavours the render instead of taking over.
Full color
Color v1 · 40%
Say the palette out loud — gold in the eyes, bronze ornament, pale stone skin. Color follows named colors far better than the word “colorful”.
Design for the body
The full-sleeve prompt
A sleeve is composition first, illustration second. This prompt describes the placement — where the head turns, where the body thins, where the negative space breathes — and runs with no style at all.
Full sleeve dragon — pure linework
No style
For a sleeve, describe the placement, not just the creature: where the head turns, where the body thins, where the negative space goes. The list of 'no shading, no grey, no textures' is what forces clean stencil line.
Generated with no style at all. When the prompt is this specific, a LoRA only gets in the way. Pair it with a tall ratio (9:16).
Proof it holds up
One subject, different styles
The rose was simple on purpose. Here is the same principle on work you would actually book.
A dove — softly, then cleanly
Dotwork · 40%
Feathers dissolve into grain and the halo fades out softly. Delicate — suits thin skin and small placements.
Simple Lora · 60%
Every feather gets an edge, the contrast steps up, the silhouette snaps. Reads across a room and traces straight to a stencil.
The weights differ too — 40% lets the dotwork whisper, 60% lets the line speak.
A skull, three ways — all at 80%
Simple Lora
Outline first: crisp edges, graphic petals, everything readable as line.
Neo Tribal
Torn edges and flat grey flooding the bone, black running off it.
Realism v2
Full weight and volume — polished beetle shells, deep sockets, black surround.
If words are not your thing
Let the Prompt Helper write it
The sparkles button inside the generator. Describe the idea in plain language — in your own language if you prefer — or tap the mic and say it out loud.
Speak or type
The mic transcribes straight into the box so you can edit before sending.
Pick a flavour
It returns several variants — realism, minimal, dark, color. Tap “Use” on the one you like.
Make it yours
Treat the result as a starting point. Change a word or two before you generate.
Your turn
This Medusa is one
tap from being yours
The exact prompt, both styles and their weights — loaded into the generator, ready to run. Change one word or the whole subject.
Working with the Stencil Extractor instead? Stencils, ratios and sharing