im thinkin of getting a maori style tribal on my calf but cant find any designs that i really like appart form one design which you cant see the full tattoo, so the artists cant work from it. id love it if any of you artists could sketch out a traditional maori design to fit the back of my calf. this was the design i wanted originally so if it could be anything like this it would be great. 
. cheers folks!:D
Buy a book. Seriuasly 😛 There is a lot of good books out there about Maori tattoos, telling the story behind it all and different ways. Buy them. Amazon.com is your friend 😉
Even the librarys here in small non-tattoo friendly Norway has books like that 😛
Or check out the waaay old works of Captain Cook – the man who brought us tattoos.
Other than that… I remember there was an artist at a norwegian tattoo convention back in 06 who specialiced in different tribal tattoos, including Maori. Don’t remember his name, but I can check it out. He was pretty outstanding, did tribals the right way 😛
Im studying art in school at the minute and studying tattoos. i reworked this tattoo and i took the general shape of it but filled it in with different random patterns that i made up myself. would this still have the traditional maori meanings to it, and would it be acceptable to a maori person? ill post up another picture asap.
Hi Ben
Well if you put your own design in it may not have any significant tribal meaning and would purely be art (which there is nothing wrong with).
As for offending there is a divide the art has only really been resurrected quite recently (last 60 years or so prior to this the banning on tattooing meant that it had become almost extinct as an open art) and many are still somewhat protective over what they consider to be their heritage, whilst others tend to go with the flow.
I can really only see offence if you have something done that would be seen as disrespectful.
Take Care
Matthew
I’ve done alot of maori designed tattoos, mine are all contemporary and thus not classed as offensive to the maori culture, if someone wants their heritage etc i tell them they have to get it drawn up from someone from their family or someone that knows the history, even then i think they have to seek permission before getting it tattooed. So you could design something yourself and then it would be your design alone, dont go copying someone elses work…that would be offensive.
Here’s some of my cultural stuff, there are a couple there that have been specifically designed by maori to mean something
http://www.bodymodz.co.nz/Cultural.html
well i suppose that was telling me what i needed to know. i love maori designs but in not maori lol. by any chance would you be able to design something like the one in that picture or even smaller? if its a no, its ok because i understand that you usually get payd to do that. by the way thats really nice work!:)
if you’re talking to me, i have enough trouble keeping up with my clients designs at the moment, have a backlog
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