The artist with a full week
Six clients, six references, six evenings of tracing. Converting them to line first leaves the judgement — weight, spacing, what to drop — where it belongs, and removes the mechanical part.
A photo or a drawing in · Clean transfer linework out · Seconds, not an evening of tracing
Tattoo Stencil Maker
Turn your reference into a clean transfer draft, leave the mechanical tracing behind, and spend your attention shaping the tattoo you actually want to put on skin.
Line weight that holdsShading marked, not paintedPrint-ready contrast
Before / after
A photographed rose, then the linework
Our own run on this site's engines. Drag the divider and watch what survives: an outline per petal edge, veins on the leaves, hatching only in the deepest shadow, and not one grey pixel anywhere. Every output is AI-generated; line weight is still a decision for whoever tattoos it.
Drag to compare before and after
AI image tool
What a tattoo stencil actually is
It is the outline drawing that gets transferred onto skin before any ink goes in: flat black lines on white, no colour, no photographic tone, showing only what the artist will follow.
Image tool
This is the one page in the tattoo cluster used by both sides of the chair. Artists convert reference into line to save an hour of tracing per piece. Clients convert their own photo — a pet, a portrait, a plant from the garden — into something an artist can actually work from. The demo is our own run: a photograph of a red rose, and the same rose as a transfer sheet.
One realistic caution: a generated stencil is a starting draft, not a finished transfer. Line weight still needs an artist judgement at the size you are actually tattooing, and small internal detail usually has to be thinned or dropped.
Creative engine
How the conversion runs
Upload the photo or drawing, ask for a stencil, print the result on transfer paper.
Photo or sketch
Black on white
Thermal transfer
What gets discarded is the point
The colour goes, obviously, but so does every soft gradient. What is left is the line that survives being pushed into skin — which is why a stencil looks sparser than the photograph and should.
No tracing evening
The tedious part of turning reference into line is the part this removes; the judgement calls stay with the artist. Anything photographable becomes line, including handwriting, which is the request that comes up most often.
How to use
Three steps from photo to transfer
A clean, high-contrast source produces a clean stencil. There is no way around that.
Pick a source with clear edges
Even light, a plain background, the subject filling the frame. Busy backgrounds get interpreted as part of the design, and a dim photo produces mush wherever the model cannot tell an edge from a shadow.
Ask for line, and say how much
"Clean transfer stencil, black outlines on white, no grey, hatching only in the deepest shadows" is the whole brief. Add "bold" or "fine" depending on the size — a piece going on a finger needs fewer lines than one going on a thigh.
Print it and check it at size
Print at the actual dimensions before you fall in love with it. Detail that reads beautifully on a screen frequently turns into a solid blob at four centimetres, and that is easier to see on paper than to argue about.
Who it's for
Who needs linework, and why
Two sides of the chair and one person practising at home.
The client with a photo
You want your own dog, not a dog from a flash sheet. Bringing a clean line version of the photo makes the first consultation about placement and size rather than about whether the idea is workable at all.
The apprentice on fake skin
Practice needs a stack of stencils, not one precious drawing. Generate a dozen, run them through the thermal printer, and spend the time on the needle — then preview the finished piece on an arm to check the placement reads.
Answers
Stencil FAQ
Asked by both sides of the machine.
Yes — that is what the output is shaped for. Black on plain white with no half-tones is exactly what a thermal printer needs; photographic greys are what make transfers come out patchy. Print at the size you intend to tattoo, not scaled to fill the sheet.
For portraits designed as line art, start with a clear reference and choose a deliberate fine-line, traditional, botanical, lettering, or geometric treatment that gives your artist a strong draft to shape.
Yes, and it is one of the better uses. Photograph the writing flat under even light with no shadow across the page. The output cleans up paper texture and pen wobble while keeping the shapes of the letters, which is the part that carries the meaning.
Ask for them explicitly — "bold heavy outlines" or "delicate fine linework" — and rerun. Weight is the single most consequential variable at small sizes, so it is worth generating both and comparing them printed rather than deciding on screen.
Treat it as a draft. Interior detail that will close up as ink spreads has to be opened out, line weight has to be set for the final size, and anything ambiguous needs a decision an image model does not make. Every output is AI-generated, and the artist edits before it goes on skin.
It keeps the subject and layout of what you upload. If you want the design cropped, mirrored, or arranged differently on the sheet, do that to the source image first — asking for it during the conversion tends to cost you line quality.
Kavel pricing — you pay per generation, never per seat
Credits are shared across everything Kavel runs. You see the cost before each run, and a failed job is never charged.
50% OFFYour first purchase is half price
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Start generating before you pay anything, and keep earning credits every day you come back. No card, no account needed.
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What's included
- 15 credits before you sign up
- +40 when you create an account
- +100 a week from daily check-ins
- = 488 a month — 97 images or 12 videos
- No card, no account
- Free engine every day
- Photo editing
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The whole shelf from day one — video, image and editing engines on one balance, with enough of it each month to keep a project moving.
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The whole shelf is open from day one.$29.90 / month
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What's included
- 3,150 credits per month
- Up to 630 images or 78 videos
- Every model unlocked
- Clean downloads, no watermark
- Cost shown before you generate
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For work that ships weekly: drafts, final clips and the stills that go with them, with your runs off the shared queue.
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- 7,200 credits per month
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For 4K finals and large batches — the biggest monthly balance, off the shared queue, across every engine on the shelf.
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Ideal when several campaigns share one pool.$99.90 / month
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- Up to 2,640 images or 330 videos
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More tools
Before and after the stencil
Design it, preview it, or take the drawing somewhere else.
Turn the reference into line
Upload the photo, get the transfer draft, and spend the evening on the tattoo instead of on tracing it — then check the placement on a real arm.