A traditional tiger can be either the full body of the tiger or just its head and face. The typical color for a tiger's fur should be black, white and orange with red, green or blue eyes to give a beautiful contrast in colors; however, the colors are ultimately up to your discretion. The tiger can be a small and cute little infant cat, a large snarling beast or anything in between, but the claws, teeth, whiskers and stripes of the tiger should be well-defined.
Tribal tattoos are Aboriginal designs of intersecting and overlapping lines, either shaded or completely filled with black of colored ink. The typical tribal design either lays flat or wraps around a portion of your body; however, an artist can easily manipulate the design of the tribal art to form any shape, including a tiger. It is customary to maintain the same color throughout a tribal piece, though you can choose to play with the colors a little. Just remember, a tribal animal is just in the shape of the animal, and small details like teeth, whiskers and eyes will most likely not be present.
A tiger's paw tattoo can be either the paw of the animal itself or just the tracks or prints that the paw would make. It can be a single paw or many and you can adjust the size of the prints to fit on small portions of your body or have them tattooed in full-scale size on your back or thigh. Any other places may be too small for a full-size tiger paw print. you can choose to use any colors you wish for the tattoo, but you should strongly consider simple black, so as to emulate the appearance of an inked print.
To have the meaning and significance of a tiger tattoo, you do not have to tattoo the image of a tiger at all. If you really want to portray the properties of a tiger as your own personal qualities, consider tattooing a tiger's stripes to a portion of your body. This portion can be a small or large patch, depending on preference, and either just tattoo black stripes or also fill in the negative space between the stripes with orange or any other color.