Legend of Zelda

Can a tattoo project get any better? Nope, i didn't think so!

Sometime towards the end of 2024 one of my loveliest clients told me she wanted to celebrate entering her 30s in 2025 with a massive tattoo project. She want me to be the one to take up such an important piece to her for which I am incredibly grateful. Then came the details of her vision and I can admit that I haven't been this happily surprised many times in my 11 year run as a tattoo artist.

Not only did she want a Legend of Zelda themed sleeve, she also wanted to have Links body markings from Tears of the Kingdom. Calling this project a sleeve doesn't do justice to the extend of it, as the patterns extend over the shoulder, down to the chest and around the rib cage.

We both knew it was going to take several sessions of careful planning, a lot of free hand work and patience, but we were so excited about it that it made this process a wonderful fulfilling artistic experience.

Collaboration

My client is an excellent designer with exceptional artistic expression skills and great understanding of composition. So understandably she had a clear vision of what she wanted us to achieve. She had great ideas on where and how she wanted each component to appear and was able to provide important input on the body markings, by bringing lots of in game screenshots of Link to copy from.

It took quite some time to get the closest possible version on her feminine upper body anatomy, but with some adjustments and a few compromises, we both ended up in a place that could deliver the essence of the markings in the most faithful way.

This was admittedly the most fun i've had with a freehand ever! We also added the flower elements here and there and this gave an ancient stone look that really fit the idea.

Link

Getting the right look for Link was probably the most important part of the whole project. When you love a character this much, their depiction needs to match the very essence of them.

We wanted to keep the in game look as much as possible and give it a little bit of a more realistic twist.

Of course, Dark Link and the Master Sword were an absolute necessity to make this portrait the best representation of the character.

Composition

The goal with the rest of the sleeve was to incorporate all the requested elements in an organic flow.

This is a good moment to appreciate my clients desire for a high contrast tattoo with elements appearing in negatives and having no fear dark backgrounds.

While this is a primarily black and grey tattoo, we felt that the red details on the eyes and the faint mossy green on the markings were important enough to incorporate but also not loud enough stand out too much.

While using my clients input and suggestions on where each element should be placed, my goal was to do all that while maintaining a composition that is interesting and has flow, from every direction. A good sleeve needs to look good, any way the wearer is standing, but that's something that can be achieved when the client trusts the artists knowledge and experience just like my client did with me.

I'm so glad I got to spend so much of 2025 with this incredibly creative project idea and such a lovely client to collaborate with. Projects like these help me push my skills further and remind me how much I love tattooing as a craft.

It took us 8 sessions and 35 hours in total.

Thank you for reading.