Full back realism tattoo of cupped hands holding a leafy tree on a small island, set against a swirling galaxy with planets and asteroids, in full colour.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cupped hands holding a tree in a cosmic back piece

Realism · Back · Colour · Photo

A large back piece shows two cupped hands holding a leafy tree growing on a small rocky island. Behind them a swirling galaxy, glowing orange sun, ringed and cratered planets and drifting asteroids fill the skin in blues, oranges and greens. The shading is smooth and painterly, with soft gradients in the sky and sharp highlights on the hands and foliage, and the design wraps across the whole upper back.

Realism Back Hand Tree Island Galaxy Planet Sun Space Sky Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the sapling is still alive, though the cabin roof has nearly done for it. I dug it out of the bank at Hillmorton with Mam's trowel, the one with the cracked handle, and wrapped its roots in a wet sack the way Dad always did with the cuttings for the lock gardens. It has lost three leaves since Rugby and grown two new ones, so I think it has made its mind up.

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You asked in your last letter what the sky looks like from the cut at night now that the works have gone up beyond the fields. I will tell you honestly. It is not the same sky. The clouds come down low over the water, and there is a wide pale smear where the Milky Way used to be. Last Thursday a sun came up orange behind the gasworks chimney that I would have sworn was the moon, except it was far too warm to be. Jack from the next boat says it is only the haze off the new plant. He may be right. He generally is, which is why nobody will play cards with him.

Here is what I keep thinking. When the pound runs low and the water in the lock stands still, I sit on the roof with my hands cupped round the sapling, the way you held that robin which flew into the kitchen when we were small. The whole boat tips very slightly, as if the canal were something bigger that could lift us. Nothing is lifting us. The lock simply empties, and we drop down to the next level.

I am keeping the sapling. I will plant it on the little island of bank by the Braunston turn where the willows went brown. If it takes, come and see it, and bring your boots. Your loving sister, Nell. P.S. Mam says the kettle is yours when you come, but I have given the cracked trowel to nobody.