Fine line tattoo of a grey desk lamp beside a yellow ball with a pink star, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Desk lamp and star ball on upper back

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

A grey-shaded desk lamp with an articulated arm sits beside a yellow ball with a pink star and a blue shadow. The lamp is drawn in thin outlines with soft grey shading, while the ball carries the only solid colour. The tattoo is centred on the upper back, with the skin and loose hair around the neck visible in the frame.

Fine line Back Ball Star

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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

The ball went under the chart table on the third night out of Tilbury, the same minute the desk lamp decided it had had enough of standing upright. I heard it before I saw it: a dull knock, a bounce, then nothing but the hull ticking against the swell. With the torch clamped in my teeth, I got down on the wet linoleum and found the lamp lying on its side like a drunk heron, its jointed arm folded at the elbow and its shade pointing at the bulkhead as if it was ashamed of itself.

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Captain Ferrier had bolted that lamp to the table in 1979, the year he swore he'd retire, and he had never once let anyone else adjust it. He said the arm had a memory in it, that it would bend back to where you had last left it if you were patient. I was not patient. I was twenty-six and had a watch to keep, so I hooked two fingers under the base and hauled. The arm bent, then sprang, then swung its head down toward the floor as if it had been waiting all along to fetch something.

The ball rolled out from under the table on the next lurch, yellow as a yolk, with its pink star winking up at me. It ran the length of the chart room, hit the far wall, and came back, bouncing once on the rolled edge of the carpet. The lamp stretched its neck after it, very carefully, and the shade tipped forward until the light fell on the ball like a spotlight. We stayed like that for the whole of the next roll, the three of us, the ship groaning, the star turning slowly in its own small circle of light.