InkCraftCool tattoos for men that read across a room
40 men's cool tattoos photographed on skin for InkCraftBy Uladzimir TumanauUpdated
The cool page is built on three heavy styles, blackwork, Japanese and neo-traditional, and these are our designs in them, photographed on men. They sit anywhere from a ring finger to the full length of the spine, and the distance each one reads from is the test.
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional tattoo on a man's ankle
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork tattoo on a man's back
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese snake flower tattoo behind a man's ear
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese koi fish tattoo on a man's bicep
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional tattoo on a man's calf
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork tattoo on a man's chest
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork mouth tattoo on a man's collarbone
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional tattoo on a man's elbow
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese tattoo on a man's finger
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional hummingbird tattoo on a man's foot
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese tattoo on a man's forearm
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional cat tattoo as a full sleeve on a man
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese dragon tattoo as a half sleeve on a man
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork hummingbird tattoo on a man's hand
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork wolf tattoo on a man's hip
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork tattoo on a man's knee
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork fish tattoo on a man's lower back
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork lion tattoo on a man's neck
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork snake tattoo on a man's palm
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese sun tattoo on a man's ribs
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional butterfly tattoo on a man's shin
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese koi fish tattoo on a man's shoulder
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork tattoo on a man's spine
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork tattoo on a man's stomach
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork tattoo on a man's thigh
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional hummingbird tattoo on a man's wrist
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork tattoo on a man's back
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese koi fish tattoo behind a man's ear
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese lips tattoo on a man's bicep
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese tattoo on a man's calf
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese tattoo on a man's chest
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork hummingbird tattoo on a man's elbow
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional tattoo on a man's finger
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional tattoo on a man's foot
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese tattoo on a man's forearm
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional tattoo as a full sleeve on a man
- Japanese · colourTry it on — Color Japanese tattoo as a half sleeve on a man
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional tattoo on a man's hand
- neo traditional · colourTry it on — Color neo traditional bee tattoo on a man's hip
- blackwork · black and whiteTry it on — Black and white blackwork snake tattoo on a man's lower back
Every pair is one tattoo: the design as it was drawn, and a photograph of that same design on the body.
These 40 tattoos in bold styles on men, in numbers
- Body parts
- 26
- Black and grey
- 15
- Colour
- 25
- Most common style
- blackwork
Weight you can see from the doorway
Legibility has arithmetic behind it. Normal 20/20 vision separates two marks about one minute of arc apart, which is roughly 0.3 mm at a metre and 0.9 mm at three. Any gap in a tattoo narrower than that fills in to the eye at that distance, so a design reads across a room only if its important shapes are separated by millimetres rather than fractions of one. Blackwork, Japanese and neo-traditional work are drawn that way, which is most of the case for calling them cool.
The blackwork in this set makes the point most plainly. The shoal of fish on the lower back is solid black silhouettes with bare skin between them, the wolf on the hip is built from hard black triangles, and the lion on the side of the neck is a heavy mane round an open face; each would read from the far side of a bar. They are also the pieces sun will change least, since black is the most light-stable pigment in tattooing.
Mouths turn up three times: an open mouth on the collarbone, lips in waves on a bicep and a tongue out among blossom across a chest. The last is the shape John Pasche fixed for the Rolling Stones in 1971, and it reads from anywhere in a room for the same reason the logo does: one red mass inside one black outline, with no fine detail it depends on.
Japanese and neo-traditional, and where they come from
The Japanese pieces follow a grammar older than any trend: koi in waves on a bicep, a shoulder and a half sleeve, and a dragon among red blossom running down another half sleeve. That grammar was set in Edo prints, above all Utagawa Kuniyoshi's series of Suikoden heroes begun in 1827, whose tattooed figures fed a fashion for full-body work in the city. A koi swimming upward refers to the Chinese legend of the carp that climbs the waterfall at the Dragon Gate and becomes a dragon.
Neo-traditional is American traditional with more to say: the heavy outline and saturated colour of flash like Sailor Jerry's, plus a line that swells and thins, a wider palette and ornament borrowed from Art Nouveau. The octopus on the calf, the hummingbird at a flower on the foot, the cat among roses on a full sleeve and the lion's head on the back of the hand are all in it, and they are why colour outnumbers black and grey in this grid.
The two traditions met early. Don Ed Hardy went to Japan in 1973 to work with the tattooist Horihide and brought Japanese composition back to American shops, which is why a koi and a traditional rose can share an arm without a fight. Trash polka, which the cool page also counts, has no photographs on men yet, so every image here belongs to one of the other three styles.
Where the distance argument breaks
Size is the part a man's frame makes easy. The half sleeves, the full sleeves, the chest pieces and the long work down the spine are sized to the broad surfaces they sit on, and they carry across a room because they are fifteen centimetres and more, not because of their style alone.
The small spots are where the argument fails. The Japanese horse and the neo-traditional fan sit on ring fingers as bands, and at that size they read as a coloured ring from a metre away, whatever style they are drawn in. That is no reason to skip them, but it is a different kind of tattoo: seen close by the wearer and by whoever shakes his hand, not from the doorway.
Weight is not enough on its own, either. The 1990s tribal armband was as black and bold as anything here and became the standard example of a dated tattoo, because the flash-sheet version kept the weight and dropped the source; tribal tattoos for men traces what it left behind. The blackwork here that will last carries its source in the drawing, like the Egyptian cat above an Eye of Horus that runs down one man's spine.
Common questions
- How far away should a cool tattoo be readable?
- From across an ordinary room, about three metres, is a fair test. At that distance the eye merges anything closer together than about a millimetre, so the shapes that carry the design need gaps of a few millimetres. Hold the stencil, or a photo of it at full size, at that distance before booking.
- Does colour or black hold up better over the years?
- Black, by a clear margin. It is the most light-stable tattoo pigment, while yellows and pale colours fade first in sun. The colour pieces here, the koi, the octopus and the hummingbirds, keep their shape as they fade because a heavy black outline carries the drawing, so the colour can soften without the design going with it.
- Can a finger tattoo be cool at that size?
- It can be good, but it will not read from a distance. The two ring-finger pieces here, a horse and a fan, look like a coloured band from a metre away and only show their detail up close. Treat a finger piece as one for you and the people near you, and keep the drawing bold enough to survive grip.
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.