Close-up of a dark grey abstract tattoo on the lower back above neon green bikini bottoms, with a beach behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dark ink cluster on lower back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the lower back and hip of a person wearing neon green bikini bottoms, taken outdoors with sea and sand behind. A cluster of dark, irregular ink shapes runs up the side of the torso, and the design is cropped at the top of the frame, so its full form cannot be made out. The ink appears black or dark grey against warm skin, and the framing is a close, angled view with the background softly out of focus.

Back Abstract shape Beach

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

Dear Margaret, the ink went over before I had signed my name, so you will have to forgive the blot that climbs the page like a bramble. The inkwell is cracked at the lip, a thing I should have mended before the tide came in last night and rattled the north tower down to its foundations again. I have moved the desk to the window where the wind can dry the paper, and there I sit with my coat buttoned to the chin, copying out the castle accounts for Mr Hollis, who has never once visited and never will.

Keep reading

The shapes on the page are not letters, though I tried to read them. They look like the dark stones that stand at the cliff foot below the chapel, the ones the fishermen call the Sisters, scattered and crowded together where the sea has worn them. Yesterday I walked down to count them for the survey and found the blackest of them had split along a seam, and inside was a crust of old iron the colour of the ink. I put it in my pocket. It is in my pocket now, cold against my hip as I write.

I will bring it to you on Sunday, if the road is passable. You always said I should keep one thing from this place that was not a debt, and perhaps this is it. The steward's ledger says the castle was never taken by siege, only abandoned, when the last lord sailed west and did not return. I think the Sisters were the ones who kept the gate. Come and see them before the spring tide takes them, and bring a clean pen. Your loving brother, Tom.