[Bit OT] Help Steppe art

Hello fellow EB players.

I was wondering if you could help me a little. I'm planning on tattoing a steppe inspired design and what better place to ask for designs and advice than this forum. The one I fancy the most is a dragon, maybe like this, or this amazing designs.

The questions: Are those designs good representations of Steppe Culture dragons? Or are they closer to Chinese motifs?

Could the people that made the art for the game (or anyone else) show me some sketches or ideas?

My only requisite is that the images are mostly in black and white, I don't fancy tattoos with too many colours.

P.S.: Before anyone asks, this isn't a thing about "cool" tattoos. A quarter of my blood from my ancestors comes from the steppes and I'm a history enthusiast, so it makes sense, at least for me. Another quarter of my ancestry is Slav, and I have a tattoo of the symbol of Perun, the Slavic god of thunder (I'll post a pic later if anyone is interested).

Thanks.

Very nice designs indeed. The first link, IMO is pretty close to chinese motivs. We must remember that an almost constant interaction hapopened between nomads and chinese, so it's normal that they have strong influence upon each other... The second is more of a "tribal style" the model is indeed "nomad" but the style in which it is created isn't the third as a stylised chineese dragon.

If you Google sythian tattoos, you'll have very good ideas about styles. a lot of mummies of scythian warriors have been uncovered with their tattoos stil visible

Thanks for the reply. I did quite a few extensive searches on Google and other search engines (after all, this is a tattoo, once it's done, you can't go back). Not only Scythian, but other keywords like Sarmatian, Hun, Roxolani, Alan, Steppe, Nomad, etc.

Some of the mummies tattoos are very neat looking, but sadly not all of them have their complete sketches, which is what I need to take to the tattooing artists. I really like the griffin and the mountain ram tattoos, maybe after the dragon. Bit off-topic: What an experience it must have been getting a tattoo back then! No modern needles, no special creams, no antibiotics, etc.

A couple of websites I stumbled across, that can be helpful for anyone else interested in getting an ancient design tattoo (and not only Steppe-inspired):

http://www.luckyfishart.com/index.html

http://www.mundurucu.com/

True, the experiance must have been quiet painful. But again, in that time they provided magical protection for the warriors. Ready to suffer a bit for invulnability? Many desings are three quarter, or half missing, true. But it also has an advantage : make the first half conform to the original desing, and, tell the artist to continue the missing part IN THE SAME style, but using his own creativity, OR your own, maybe you'd have an idea how you want it finish. like this, you would have your own, unique, desing of steepe tattoo... But think a lot, like you say, tattoos are there to stay!

If you are wanting an authentic Steppe tattoo then the Pazyryk mummies are the way to go, you can always get the tattoo artist to design you a completely new one based off the style, it will cost a bit more though.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://media.web.britannica.com/eb-m...0-11D4A8D7.jpg