I’m an atheist and yes I’m aware there’s a big difference between those terms, I probably should have made my stance a little clearer in the OP. Why I am is largely irrelevant and I’m sure we can all agree there is more than enough debate on the subject elsewhere.

And obviously a tattoo doesn’t HAVE to be atheistic, but it certainly can’t be religious, given my beliefs. As it seems day of the dead imagery does have a religious nature I’m just wondering how I can remove/negate/attack this religious element in some sort of way. I think there’s a lot to be said for subtlety and was just curious if anyone had any ideas without the use of pretty strong anti-religious quotes or cliched devil imagery. Perhaps this would have been a much better OP :p

I mean if worst comes to worst I can either add some script or just scrap the idea entirely. Just trying to explore some other paths first.

thanks for your reply, this is the sort of response I was really interested in hearing. I agree with you that making a day of the dead image not religious is pretty tough, so I guess my aim is to get something that’s not exactly day of the dead. Do you think the image I posted earlier:

is still very much day of the dead? What about zombie/rotting flesh stuff? I was thinking one possibility may be to move away from having a girls face with a skull painted on top and instead focus on being able to see her actual skull through her skin, something like this:

but have her praying as well. do you think that’s a little less day of the dead and more likely to be interpreted as atheistic?

thanks for the replies so far

I would keep the “skull effect”, just remove some of the pattern stuff. More like this

or this

and my reasoning is pretty much just hoping it would be less likely to be immediately identified as day of the dead.

I agree that most people don’t see the imagery as being religious, I know I didn’t at first, but now that I know the religious connection it’s really annoying me haha. Kind of like getting something written in a foreign language and then you discover it’s actually grammatically incorrect. Sure, it might look cool and no one really knows what it means, but deep down it’d always bother you and eventually someone will notice :p

I still think it’s an awesome style and the rough sketches I have in my head seem like they would be really cool. It’s just that my motive for getting this is actually my dislike for religion haha so I really need to somehow find a way to remove any confusion and bring out more of its true meaning.