The original eye tattoo on the elbow point hasn’t held, which can happens on ink done in other difficult areas such as the hands and feet as well. The new work will likely finish with an upgrade to this eye tattoo. The pattern is not bad, while the dot work works against some diamond shape negative space.

An awesome abstract take on the traditional elbow spider web tattoo. The subject has added a bad ass arachnid over the top – there’s plenty of people who’d freak out over this 8 legged friendly. The artist has kept it deliberately dark in line with the web, but has used white highlights on the chitinous shell to get it looking more malevolent (and smooth)

This is a gray, finely detailed variation of the Eye of Providence tattoo. It’s been well inked initially but struggled to keep clarity and line distinction as it has aged. If doing individual elbow designs it helps to work with fatter lined, less intense pieces of detail.

This elbow works well within the tribal design space by working outward from the point of bone and making a larger artwork. The lack of shading here is important – the black and negative space work in direct opposition to each other, which would also show up when the joint moves.

A cool rose elbow tattoo that falls short of being great. The use of a wider gauge needle or premier ink may have helped retain brightness in the powder blue fill, while the black outline could be deployed more clearly by use of a sharpie style thickness. The gray highlights have gotten lost and faded a bit. This rose tattoo could be reinvigorated with a touch up and slightly more effective 3rd highlight color.

This looks brilliant, although you hope the tattoo keeps this level of clarity and detail in the rose pattern as it ages. It’s fantastic at using color and shade contrast to make the piece pop, both from the elbow rose and within the rest of the design. Opting to fill the rose with red on red is an innovative technique.