At one time for small boys the building and execution of a boat crafted from the Saturday newspaper and sent down a flowing neighbourhood stream was the key activity for a weekend.
You’d get your crew together, pinch your household newspaper, work on different designs and then run them down the watercourse and compete to see whose boat travelled the fastest, looked the coolest, or braved the storm the strongest.
Now you can reminisce about papers boats and look back on am innocent, worry free time of life. This makes them popular in the world of tattoo during a time of digital & social media, video games, and greater interconnection.
Read on for 50 examples of how men have travelled back to boyhood with a variety of paper boat tattoos.
Paper Boat Tattoo Ideas For Men
This minimalist paper boat tattoo is excellently crafted. The artist’s ability to carefully create the notebook paper – complete with red line – is a commitment to getting the small details right. The black outline makes for a good border, and the boat looks like it could float with no trouble.
The small waves supporting this well depicted paper boat tattoo create an excellent pattern effect that tempers the heavy grade shadow. It’s an excellent little piece with cool contours and canny use of negative space.
Now this is a cracking little paper boat tattoo. The tattooist’s emphasis on the newspaper type effect looks cool and innovative, and mixes well with the circular dotwork border. The light shade and deft wave caps are a nice added touch of technical skill.
A killer line work message in a bottle tattoo. Love the different uses of fine line black applied in interesting ways to create a variety of shapes. The small paper boats cruising through waves beneath the beating sun looks wicked, while the nuanced shade in clouds and half moon waves is really fun.
This paper boat must have been made from vibranium to be able to still be afloat but that big wave is about to swamp it. Again, the circular soft border works to shape the entire image, and makes the sharp, short line work to flourish. The competing hash lines of rain and sun battle well with each other across the sky.
This is a cool back of arm paper boat tattoo. It’s small, but well delineated and the heavy dotwork shading is a tremendously nuanced piece of fill.
Another, more spare use of dotwork to shade a more oddly shaped paper boat. It’s a good, clean tattoo with deft execution that could be incorporated with other body art or left to itself.
This triangular small tattoo is a cool piece of art. The tattooist’s use of white ink highlights adds another layer to a useful mix of shade and shape work, and adds luster to the compact central paper boat.
Killer line work. The diamond shape allows for some fancy fine black line and helps fashion variety into the paper boat tattoo. The different curves at either end make it an interesting and innovative piece.
This paper boat is about to get crushed under the (completely unbelievable) wight of two crashing waves. The fine line waves beneath the boat are effective, clean lines that support the understated paper boat.
Death rides a paper boat. This small tattoo is an epic. It uses some excellent, different layers in negative space and shading, while the reaper himself seems positively cheerful to be manning an oar. It’s a clever and unique tattoo expression.
