Mind-Blowing Tattoo Designs That Appear 3-Dimensional

Tattoos can’t actually be three-dimensional, but talented tattoo artists can make a design that appears 3D. This means that it appears to be popping off the skin rather than laying flat like your typical two-dimensional tattoos. Some 3D-like tattoos appear to be photorealistic. Others appear like optical illusions painted onto your skin.

This optical illusion tattoo makes it seem as if the individual has a hole in his leg, but that’s just the nature of the illusion.

Enjoy the detailed work on this tattoo that pays homage to the gentleman’s actual prosthetic leg. The minute, detailed work of the tattoo shows the prosthetic limb’s workings as it’s exploding out from under the skin.

A mixture of bright, vivid seemingly neon blue inks that appear lighted from LEDs and black and gray inks in a stacked parquet design form this 3-D piece that seems to cut open the individual for a view inside.

Another cubed block tattoo, this piece blends modern art with optical illusion. The individual’s skin seems divided between the blocks and could fall off at any time.

You might at first mistake this for a patterned shirt because more than one of the pentagon shapes in this piece seems to stand up from the skin or sink into it.

This tattoo creates the optical illusion that the individual’s fingertips float – disembodied from the remainder of his body. The tattoo uses an inordinate amount of jet black ink to create the appearance of space. Above the black, not one, but two fantastically detailed paintings appear on the individual’s wrists and lower arms.

If you love the look of embroidery and wish you could get your grandmother’s sampler on your arm or back, you can. Simply find a tattoo artist well-versed in embroidery tattoos. This type of work requires the artist to freehand the design.

Flowers make an amazing embroidery tattoo subject, too. The petals of this flower require precision and significant artistry. While you can use stencils to create some basic tattoos, that isn’t the case with this type of advanced work. The incredible detail and the shading and “brushstroke” work of a tattoo like this one requires both experience as a tattoo artist and as a sketch artist or painter.

The tattoo artist who created this should hang this work of art in a museum because this piece genuinely appears to have a butterfly simply sitting on the person’s shoulder.

Similar to the butterfly, this amazing cat tattoo leaps off of the skin. It also combines color, brushstroke work, and shading to achieve the 3D feline.

The individual with this tattoo must have wanted to specify care instructions. This 3D tattoo creates a send-up of a clothing care tag that seems to stand out from the individual’s body.

You rarely see a poignant tattoo, but this artist painted a picture of a man preparing to take a leap of faith on an individual’s back. This massive 3D artwork uses basic blacks, blues, and grays, but its shading creates the illusion of being able to walk into the scene.

Another 3D artwork that happens to be painted on the skin, this woman peering through a window, requires an immense amount of black ink.

Another M.C. Escher-like piece, this artwork seems to poke a hole through the individual’s upper back. This tattoo is incredibly dynamic, with so much to look at. The perspective requires many lines in gradually smaller thicknesses that also appear rounded.

This incredibly detailed tattoo takes on the appearance of a wormhole. The arm appears to be pooling in on itself, creating the ultimate void.

Escher-inspired works prove popular as optical illusion tattoos. Similar to the prior two, this one uses perspective and shading as well.

Another creative art piece, this seemingly broken glass, lets you peer inside the individual’s body to see the sinewy muscle beneath. The shattered glass takes on a spider web look while a small one-inch portion at the center has broken out entirely to show the reddish-brown of the muscle (actually another piece of the tattoo).

Combining fluorescent inks, massive sleeve artwork, 3D art, and a scuba diving theme, this tattoo or one like that would require multiple, hours-long sessions. It features both white inks for the sky above the water and gradual transitions to the darkest ocean depths of blue-black and black.

Spiderman’s costume peeks out from beneath this individual’s skin, seeming to rip through it. Both the illusion of the tearing skin and the intricate design of the Spiderman suit makes this tattoo stand out as a 3D design.

This is breathtaking pop art that happens to reside on a person’s skin instead of a canvas. Who doesn’t love lollipops? Seems like the recipient of the tattoo loved them so much that they got one permanently inked to their body.

This individual approached his tattoo artist about turning the need for a potentially disfiguring amputation into artwork. Left with only the shoulder bone of one arm, he had his tattoo artist transform it into a dolphin.

You won’t find cartoon or humor in this 3D art, which depicts a human figure erupting from the individual’s limb. As the body extricates itself from the skin, the head dissolves, as do the shoulders. It is as if, in breaking free, the person also broke apart.

Combining a honeycomb, skull, bee, and honey, this multi-layered, 3D artwork spans the space from shoulder to the elbow. The golden honeycombs appear to be glowing through excellent work with color and shading as honey drips down the skull.

When you only listen to legends, why not pay an homage to them on your forearm? This Pink Floyd and Jimmy Hendrix piece combines 3D artwork of The Wall and Hendrix with his afro done in raised 3D.

Perhaps you want a 3D tattoo, but you want a small tat that you can easily hide. Consider this sewing needle that seemingly slices through the arm.

A heart-shaped set of fishing hooks produce a brand on the individual. You can see its shadow beneath, the fishing hooks appear raised, as if it actually pierced through this individual’s skin.

This might qualify as the most intricate 3D tattoo ever. It spans three areas of the body, beginning on the individual’s shoulder, going onto the back, and continuing onto the lower arm. It layers two maps on top of one another with pieces of the top map torn away from the lower one.

Birds in flight seemingly tear open the individual’s skin to reveal the blue sky with another bird in flight beneath it.

The tattoo artist combined embroidery techniques and 3D art to create this intriguing tattoo. It looks like an iron-on patch of Homer Simpson yelling “Woo-hoo!” as he reaches for a beer. Homer’s hand touches the cap of a Duff beer, his favorite.

This unique piece isn’t yet finished, but the artist took a progress shot. The modern art flower will extend down the arm and you can see the faint outlines of the tattoo’s future as your eyes move down the individual’s arm.

Not for the faint of heart, if you want to seem as if you have a demon leaping from your skin, this white tattoo provides the ideal subject matter. White ink became all the rage a few years ago and many artists challenged themselves to find creative ways to use the new medium.

This amazing art sleeve stretches from shoulder to the inside of the hand, wrapping a DNA strand around the arm.

Combining cutouts, the Milky Way in the background, tribal emblems, and more colors of ink than seem possible in a single tat, this chest piece wows.

This 3D art seems to tear open skin to reveal a prosthetic limb or robot leg. The tears on the skin seem to lift up and away from the leg while the bright yellow spring on the prosthetic seems to depress for a footfall.

What if your skeleton wanted to crawl out of you? Of course, it would simply unzip your arm to crawl out. The zipper in this and the skeletal hand seem to rise up from the skin.

A delicate pink rose rises from the top of the hand, seemingly growing out of it. The meticulous detail and shading of this tattoo make it stunning to look at.

Ignore the blue inked neck tattoo and instead focus on the tat above the man’s ear. You don’t see it? The pen tucked behind his ear isn’t real. That’s the tat. This artist combined painstaking stroke work and shadowing with shading.