Black and grey fine line tattoo of the American flag, with dotted stars, on the back of a person's neck.

American flag on the back of the neck

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small American flag is tattooed in the centre of the back of a neck, with the stars rendered as clusters of dots in the upper left corner and the stripes as thin, evenly spaced horizontal lines. The linework is crisp and uniform, and the design is set against smooth, pale skin with a few moles and loose strands of hair visible. The image is entirely black and white, with the tattoo in solid black ink against a neutral background.

Fine line Dotwork Neck American flag Flag Star Stripe Dot

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stencil splits along its fold just as you mark out the stars, so you give up on it and take the steel nib instead. Mr Okonedo from the chandlery has promised the flag before the morning tide, and the ship is already knocking its hull against the dock wall as if it wants to leave without you. You rule the stripes first, thirteen of them, with a straightedge warmed on the stove so the ink will not bleed. Each line takes the length of a breath.

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The stars are harder. A dot is quick, but it has to be even, and nobody on the Tilbury Lass has told you whether fifty will fit in the blue corner of a flag this size. You count them out in the margin of the order book, five rows of six and then four rows of five, and you press the nib down and lift it, press and lift, until your wrist aches and the dots start to look like a sentence written in a language you cannot read. Outside, a gull lands on the gantry and waits.

Ferris comes down at dusk with a lantern and holds it at the wrong angle. He says nobody will look at the stars from the deck, that the stripes are what carry the wind. You tell him the stars are the part people count. He laughs, then stops, because he has been counting too, the names on the board by the gate that were there last winter and are not there now.

By morning the ink is dry and the flag is folded into a square no bigger than a hymnal. You hand it up to the mate, who shakes it out against the grey light and finds the corner with the dots. He holds it up to the rail for a long while before he nods. You walk home with ink under your fingernails, and it stays there for a week, about as long as it takes the ship to clear the Channel.