Ornamental tribal whatever tattoos

Yes, I lacked inspiration for the title :p. Two simple ornamental tribal-ish tattoo designs.

 

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Symmetrical gothic tattoo design

A kind of gothic / tribal tattoo design. I like the carving effect, as in old churches.

Gothic symmetrical tattoo design

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This one took forever and a day, just because I'm effing slow at shading. It's not that it's so difficult to shade, it's that's it's very difficult not to smudge what has already been shaded. (Anyone got some tips to avoid the smudging? So far I use post-it notes to mask some parts of the drawing.)

Black ink + pencils (mostly HB, and a bit of 2B and 5B).
The shadow around the design was done on computer, because I was to afraid to mess everything and smuuuudge the whole stuff.