InkCraftCool Tattoo Ideas, Chosen One by One With Reasons
By Uladzimir TumanauUpdated
Cool is a judgement, so this page argues it. The first designs were chosen one at a time and each carries the reason it is here; the rest are filled from the styles that do the same job, heavy black, hard red, bold outline, drawn to read at a distance.
blackwork aztec tattoo design Try it on — blackwork aztec tattoo design
blackwork samurai tattoo design Try it on — blackwork samurai tattoo design
blackwork viking tattoo design Try it on — blackwork viking tattoo design
ornamental viking tattoo design Try it on — ornamental viking tattoo design
trash polka samurai tattoo design Try it on — trash polka samurai tattoo design
dotwork aztec tattoo design Try it on — dotwork aztec tattoo design
illustrative samurai tattoo design Try it on — illustrative samurai tattoo design
illustrative viking tattoo design Try it on — illustrative viking tattoo design
neo traditional octopus tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional octopus tattoo design
blackwork owl tattoo design Try it on — blackwork owl tattoo design
blackwork infinity tattoo design Try it on — blackwork infinity tattoo design
neo traditional spider tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional spider tattoo design
trash polka eye tattoo design Try it on — trash polka eye tattoo design
blackwork deer tattoo design Try it on — blackwork deer tattoo design
neo traditional shark tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional shark tattoo design
neo traditional lion tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional lion tattoo design
blackwork cloud tattoo design Try it on — blackwork cloud tattoo design
neo traditional jesus tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional jesus tattoo design
neo traditional bear tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional bear tattoo design
neo traditional spider tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional spider tattoo design
blackwork eye tattoo design Try it on — blackwork eye tattoo design
trash polka lion tattoo design Try it on — trash polka lion tattoo design
blackwork ring tattoo design Try it on — blackwork ring tattoo design
neo traditional moon tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional moon tattoo design
trash polka raven tattoo design Try it on — trash polka raven tattoo design
neo traditional owl tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional owl tattoo design
Japanese koi tattoo design Try it on — Japanese koi tattoo design
blackwork tree tattoo design Try it on — blackwork tree tattoo design
blackwork feather tattoo design Try it on — blackwork feather tattoo design
Japanese fish tattoo design Try it on — Japanese fish tattoo design
blackwork star tattoo design Try it on — blackwork star tattoo design
neo traditional angel tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional angel tattoo design
neo traditional vine tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional vine tattoo design
blackwork dandelion tattoo design Try it on — blackwork dandelion tattoo design
neo traditional clock tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional clock tattoo design
Japanese dragon tattoo design Try it on — Japanese dragon tattoo design
neo traditional raven tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional raven tattoo design
trash polka tree tattoo design Try it on — trash polka tree tattoo design
neo traditional shark tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional shark tattoo design
neo traditional ouroboros tattoo design Try it on — neo traditional ouroboros tattoo design
The first eight were picked one at a time, with the reason under each; the rest are blackwork, trash polka, neo-traditional and Japanese designs carrying at most two labels.
Why these 8 lead the page
- blackwork aztec
- A Quetzalcoatl head with the stepped fret on its neck: the one pattern that makes a design Mesoamerican rather than vaguely tribal, drawn in black heavy enough to read from a doorway.
- blackwork samurai
- A mempo face mask under an antlered kabuto with the eye holes left empty. The armour is the subject and the code is the point, which is what a samurai piece is for when it is not a portrait.
- blackwork viking
- Mjölnir as the finds show it, a ring chain on the head and a wolf at the end of the shaft, hung from a torc. It is cool because it is right, not because it is Norse.
- ornamental viking
- A Borre-style gripping beast biting its own body inside a ring chain. A thousand-year-old design language doing what a bearded warrior portrait cannot: reading as designed.
- trash polka samurai
- A realistic samurai kneeling before a torii gate slashed in red. Trash polka gives the figure a structure without a Japanese background, and red on black is the most legible pairing there is.
- dotwork aztec
- The Sun Stone as a full disc, Tonatiuh at the centre and the twenty day-signs around him, in stipple that reads as carved stone. A named object, not a theme.
- illustrative samurai
- A mounted archer at full gallop drawing a yumi, wind streaking behind. Movement is the rarest thing in a tattoo and this one has it without a background to prop it.
- illustrative viking
- Two ravens on a branch over a longship prow carved with knotwork. Three Norse things that belong together, composed so the eye runs down the neck of the ship.
These 40 cool tattoos, in numbers
- Black and grey
- 26
- Colour
- 14
- Styles
- 7
- Subjects
- 28
What cool means, when it means anything
Every list of cool tattoos is somebody's taste wearing a headline, so this one says whose and why. The picks at the top of the grid were chosen by one person and each has a written reason under it. The reasons follow a pattern that is worth stating: a cool tattoo has a source, it is drawn to be read from across a room, and it does not ask the viewer to know anything to get it. A Norse gripping beast from a named art style is cool; a bearded man with horns is a costume.
That is why the rule that fills the rest of the grid is about weight rather than subject. Blackwork, trash polka, neo-traditional and Japanese work all commit to the outline and to solid mass, and they are the styles that look the same at two metres as at twenty centimetres. Cool is legibility with conviction. It is rarely fine line and it is never a design that needs its caption.
Every design here links to its subject page, where the same subject appears in other treatments, and to the page about its style. If a reason under a design does not convince you, the site has ninety other pages that make no claim about cool at all.
Sources, not moods
The single thing that separates a cool piece from a generic one is whether it came from somewhere. The samurai helmet here is a kabuto with the neck-guard plates and the lacing a real one has; the Aztec serpent carries the stepped fret that is the base pattern of that whole visual language; the Mjölnir has a ring chain on its head because the ones dug out of the ground do. None of that requires the viewer to know it. It shows as confidence in the drawing, and confidence is what people are pointing at when they say cool.
The opposite is the mood board: a skull, a clock, a rose and some smoke, chosen because each is cool separately. Together they are a collage. If you want a piece that reads as intended in fifteen years, pick one source and let the artist draw it properly, or pick a style with rules, trash polka or Japanese, whose grammar makes the composition for you.
That also settles the question of trends. Cybersigilism, patchwork and micro-realism are having their moment; blackwork and traditional have had theirs for a century. A piece built on a real source in a bold style does not date, because it was never in fashion to begin with.
Where cool work goes, and how big it is
Cool pieces are drawn to be seen, so they go where they are seen: the outer forearm, the outer bicep, the calf, the shoulder, the back of the hand for those who have decided. They are also usually larger than people first plan, because reading from a distance needs size. A trash polka samurai at eight centimetres is a smudge; at twenty it is the piece it was drawn to be.
Black holds up. Heavy black ages better than anything else on skin, which is part of why blackwork and bold traditional look cool in old photographs and fine line does not yet have old photographs. The cost is that solid black is the hardest thing to cover if you change your mind, so the subject wants to be one you are certain of. Cool and certain are not the same thing, and the pages behind each design say what each subject means for exactly that reason.
Before the appointment, put the design on yourself at the size it wants. The try-on places any of these on a photograph of your arm or leg and lets you step back from it, which is the one test a cool tattoo has to pass. If it still reads from across the room in the picture, it is the right size.
Common questions
- What makes a tattoo cool?
- A real source, a bold enough line to read from across a room, and no caption needed. A Norse gripping beast or a Japanese helmet drawn as the real objects are drawn reads as confident; a collage of skulls, clocks and smoke reads as a mood board. Cool is legibility with conviction.
- What are cool tattoo ideas for men and for women?
- The same ideas. Cool is a property of the drawing, not of who wears it: a blackwork serpent, a trash polka figure or a Japanese wave reads the same on any arm. The gendered pages on this site sort by where photographs were taken, not by what counts as cool.
- Do cool tattoos have to be big?
- Bigger than most first plans. Reading from a distance needs size, and a bold piece under ten centimetres loses the thing that made it bold. Fifteen to twenty centimetres on a forearm or calf is where most of these designs were drawn to sit.
- Will a cool tattoo look dated?
- Only if it was fashionable. Pieces built on a real source in a bold style, blackwork, traditional, Japanese, look the same in photographs from decades apart. Trend styles date with the trend, which is a reason to choose them for what they are rather than for the moment.
See it on your own skin first
InkCraft places a design on a photo of you — scaled, wrapped and shaded to the spot you pick, so you can judge the size against your own body before it is permanent.