Here's what I know - to simulate it being under a layer of translucent skin, you must blend more skin color. As soon as you do that, the whole thing becomes faded like this. I even used a Fractal_Sum here so the amount of blending is variable. I don't think the epidermis is that opaque.

I think the #1 reason you don't believe my butterfly is because it is a photo of a butterfly, or a very photorealistic drawing.

I can't find a single legit tattoo color map and mask anywhere, and I can't draw to save my life.

If you have a properly drawn properly styled image, it will look vastly different, especially if the transparency mask is a gradient instead of all or nothing like I'm using.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)