“Where I can find a picture of the tattoo Brad Pitt has in Ocean's Eleven?”
“Where can I find a picture of Vin Diesel’s tattoos in Triple X?”
”I was wondering if you had pics of the tattoos from Natural Born Killers?”
“I'm looking for a tattoo that Matthew McConaughey had in Reign Of Fire."
Most people know how to go to a search engine and look something up, but it can take a bit more to fine tune a particular search. Here are a few easy tips to faster and more effective web searching. You really can find those tattoo pictures you are looking for out there.

Movie Sites

Check out the official web site for the movie. Some will show good pictures, some will list who did the special effects makeup. Send them an e-mail and ask if they have any promotional pictures of the character showing the tattoo you like. Many people report being pleasantly surprised with good images in response. However, keep in mind that a lot of movie companies design specific designs for a character and purposely don't release pictures of the whole design in order to protect their copyright.

Along with movie sites, movie magazines and makeup industry publications often have fantastic pictures detailing exactly how the theatrical tattooing was done.

Specific Image Searches

Many search engines now have an image search feature, instead of a web page search. By selecting this option, the search engine returns to you pictures that seem to match the keywords you are looking for. Movie character names or actor names work well for this tactic.

Celebrity Fansites

If it’s male and it’s shirtless, there is a picture of it on the Internet. You may have to look a bit off the Google beaten path for these things. Celebrity tattoos are a favorite topic for web sites and searching for fan sites under the celebrity name can yield photo heavy results. Seriously, if you search for sites that cater to teenage girls, you will find pictures of any movie, tv or rock star showing his tattoos. Searching these sites for pages of pictures that are screen captures from movie roles is usually where you find what you are looking for. These young women are adept with their technology, and basically are masters of the home screen image capture technique. It's surprising how soon online version of this material is posted. Sometimes you don't even have to wait for the DVD version of the movie to become available for home rental. You'll also find scans from magazine fashion photo shoots.

Rent The Movie

For those inclined to do it yourself, rent the DVD and go take a look at those tattoos yourself. You can pause super clear frames with a DVD player, which should let you find that exact perfect shot you remembered from the movie. Take a picture or make a screen capture, or watch it with your tattooist and let them work it out.

Please note that if all of the above methods don't work, writing to me (the Body Art Editor) and asking is NOT going to work either. I don't have picture superpowers or special connections.

Check out more cool movie tattoos here.