Children’s Drawings…

Written By jorge cruz

…and the Parents Who Carry Them

There are many reasons why parents choose to tattoo their children’s drawings. Some want to hold on to a moment that disappears almost as soon as it arrives — those early years when everything is drawn with pure instinct. No fear. No self-correction. No sense of what is “right” or “wrong.” Just marks made because the hand wanted to move. There’s a strange honesty in that kind of drawing, something raw and unfiltered that adults slowly lose along the way.

Others see these tattoos as a way of marking the emotional landscape of parenthood itself — the highs and lows, the exhaustion, the tenderness, the weight of responsibility. Parenthood has a way of compressing love into something both simple and heavy at the same time. A child’s drawing can hold all of that without trying to explain it. It doesn’t analyze the feeling. It just records it.

For some parents, it’s an act of pride. A way of saying: your way of seeing the world matters. Even if it’s crooked, even if it doesn’t follow rules, even if it only makes sense to you. And for others, there’s a quieter fear behind the decision — the awareness that paper doesn’t last. That drawings get folded, lost, thrown into drawers, forgotten between moves. Ink fades. Pages tear. Childhood leaves very little physical evidence behind.

And then there are those who want something even more specific: to see themselves through their child’s eyes. A version that might be exaggerated, funny, distorted, or strangely unflattering — but always honest. Children don’t draw what they’re supposed to see. They draw what they notice. And that perspective can be confronting, tender, and deeply revealing all at once.

I’ve done quite a few of these tattoos over the years, and I genuinely love working on them. More than with most projects, I feel a strong responsibility not to interfere. This isn’t about refinement or improvement. I don’t correct proportions. I don’t straighten lines. I don’t “clean it up.” The wobble is the charm. The wobble is the voice. That instability is exactly where the drawing lives. My job is simply to carry it from paper to skin without changing its soul.

Before making the stencil, I always break the drawing down digitally — not to fix it, but to understand it. I look closely at saturation, pressure, rhythm. I pay attention to how the line behaves. You can tell a lot from that. Where the pen pressed hard. Where the hand hesitated. Whether the drawing came out in one burst of energy or was built slowly over time. Those details matter. They tell me which lines need to stay fragile, which ones can be more present, which spaces should remain untouched.

Adults often dismiss these drawings as scribbles. But if you know how to look, there’s intention there. There’s decision-making, repetition, emphasis. Even randomness has a structure. The drawing speaks in a language that isn’t trained, but it is precise in its own way.

I’m sharing some photos of these tattoos because each one carries more than an image. Each one holds a small story — about the child who made it, and the parent who chose to keep it. Children grow. They change. They move away. They become someone else entirely. But these lines stay. They remain close to the body that once held them, fed them, carried them, protected them.

It’s a quiet gesture. Not sentimental, not loud. Just a way of saying: this mattered. This moment existed. And your way of seeing the world deserves to last.

nOT

@notattoo_berlin

@notattoo_berlin

@notattoo_berlin

References:

@notattoo_berlin

@notattoo_berlin

@notattoo_berlin

@notattoo_berlin

jorge cruz
Previous

Bacchus and a Divine March
Next

On Sisyphus and the Absurd