Large black and grey bat symbol tattoo with a cracked, textured finish across the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bat symbol across upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large bat symbol fills the upper back, with its wings spread wide and a pointed centre. The wings are shaded in black and greys with a cracked, stone-like texture and a lighter highlight at the centre. The tattoo sits centrally in the frame, with two small red marks visible above it on the neck and a blurred indoor background.

Back Bat Logo

Find an artist for this

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 mason who taught me stone said a bat was only a wall that had learned to fly. I believed him until the winter the Duke of Harrowmere wanted a sign above the river gate and nobody in the city could agree on what it should be. The guild offered lions and anchors. I walked up to the scaffold with a block of grey slate from the Coldmarrow quarry and started on the wings.

Keep reading

I cut them wide so the rain would run off the ridges, and when the frost split the slate I left the cracks, because they looked like the veins in old leaves. Each night after the bell I climbed up and rubbed soot into the hollows so the wings would look older than the week I had carved them. I left the centre unshaded, a pale heart of bare stone, so that lamplight would catch it from the water.

The duke came to inspect with his steward, who wanted to know why a bat and not a crown. I told him bats hunt in the dark and find their way by listening for what comes back. The steward laughed and said Harrowmere had no need of listening. The duke only stood below with his hand over his eyes and said the carving looked like something that had been there before the gate.

That spring the river rose over the lower streets and the carts could not get through. The watchmen found the one dry road by following the pale heart of the carving down to the postern steps. The steward never mentioned bats again. I still cut my own initial small beneath the lintel, in the shadow where no one looks.