Hi Ian

I have spent hundreds of hours on the net studying tattoos for my PhD and the sad thing is there are very public domain tattoos available that are;

Modern
Good Quality
Identifiable as public domain without copyright concern.

I am not saying there are not any but many have been snapped up by copyright of the web owners, reproduced by the permission of the artist/photographer/owner or are free but the quality is a bit poor photowise.

My advice is ask ppl to donate their pictures but be clear what you want to use them for and be prepared to use model release forms if necessary.

There are plenty of flash websites that will sell you sheets of designs – Outlaw even has some on his website which are very good.

But as soon as it hits skin you are def in copyright territory.

Take Care
Matthew