Colour neo-traditional tattoo of brass knuckles with a pink bow, hearts and a KNOCKOUT banner on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Brass knuckles with bow and hearts on upper back

Neo-trad · Back · Mixed · Photo

A pair of brass knuckles with a pink bow at the top left and a banner reading KNOCKOUT across the lower front. Bold black outlines sit beneath soft purple, pink, yellow and teal watercolour-style washes, with small hearts and ink dots scattered around the design. The tattoo is photographed straight on against a grey wall, with the subject's shoulder blade and upper back filling the frame.

Neo-trad Back Bow Heart Banner Blade Watercolour splash

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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

Come closer, you lot, and mind the guy ropes. The Hartley Brothers' travelling fair came through Ashby every September, and every September the hook-a-duck stall wore the same sign over its awning. Nobody remembered who painted it first. Some said it was Mabel Cole, who ran the candyfloss and could not abide a fist fight, which is a funny thing for a woman to paint on a board.

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The brass knuckles hung from a nail in the back of the strongman's caravan, and nobody touched them except Ruby Hartley, who was nine and had no sense of fear. One morning she tied a pink ribbon round the top knuckle, a bow pinched from her dolly's pram. Her uncle Frank, who took on the booth bouts for a shilling a round, took one look and laughed until he had to sit down on the cable drum.

Then came the Tuesday the big man from Kettering stepped up to the rope, boasting about his jaw. Frank's wrist was still strapped from the week before, so Ruby walked out to the ring with the knuckles on, far too big for her, the ribbon bobbing. She didn't throw a punch. She tapped the man's chin with the flat of them, gently, the way you'd knock on a door. He folded like a deckchair, and the crowd went silent before it roared.

Next morning the banner had a new word painted beneath the old one, and the hearts Mabel had dotted round the edges were pink again. Nobody asked who did it. Ruby swore the paint had been dry when she woke, which is a thing paint never manages on a fairground in September. Off you go now, the Wheel opens at two.