Large black and grey realism style tree tattoo with bare branches across a man's upper back and shoulder, with a few coloured autumn leaves on the left shoulder.

Bare tree across a man's back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large tree with bare, twisting branches spreads across the upper back and over the left shoulder, with its trunk running down towards the lower back and roots spreading at the base. The trunk and branches are rendered in black and grey with soft shading that gives them volume, while a small cluster of red, orange and green leaves appears on the left shoulder. The tree fills most of the frame against plain skin and a pale wall, with the man's necklace visible at the top.

Realism Back Shoulder Tree Bare tree Branches Leaves Autumn leaves Root Trunk

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last of the autumn was clinging to the branches of the walnut behind Mrs Pryce's cottage when Tomas came up the lane with the cart. Nobody had cut it down in forty years. The roots had cracked the flagstones of the yard and lifted the water trough clean off its plinth, and still the thing stood, bare and black against the November sky, with its limbs reaching over the wall as though it meant to pull the whole village in.

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He had been hired to clear the yard, not the tree. Mrs Pryce had been clear about that. She sat on the step in her coat with a flask of tea going cold between her knees and watched him heave the first root with a mattock. Each time the blade bit, something gave with a sound like a knuckle cracking, and a smell came up out of the earth that was older than cider and rain.

"Leave the lowest one," she said. "It was my husband's. He used to say a tree that has taken the weight of a man's back will carry the weight of a lie without falling."

Tomas laughed, then stopped, because she had not smiled. He worked on around the big root. By dusk the yard was swept and the trough was righted, and the last leaves had gone from the highest branch, all except three that shivered red and gold above the gate, refusing to come down.

In the morning the cart was gone and the wages with it, left in a tin on the step. The tree had dropped one more leaf onto the flagstones, neatly, as if for a receipt.