Black Devanagari lettering on the side of a woman's ribs, seen during a yoga pose against a grey studio backdrop.

Devanagari script on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A woman in a yoga pose shows a black Devanagari script tattoo along the side of her ribcage, partly hidden by her arm and hair. The lettering is solid black ink with clean, even strokes, and the photo is otherwise in muted tones with coloured patterned leggings. The composition is a full-length studio shot against a plain grey background.

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 seed trays were still stacked under the potting bench when I found Aunt Vera's copybook, its spine held together with garden twine and a loop of green wire. Inside, the pages were ruled by hand, and across the top of each one ran a line of characters I couldn't read at all. Mr Desai, the pharmacist on Station Road, had taught her them in exchange for a box of sweet peas every August. Svadhyaya, he had told her, means the study of oneself, though he liked to add that it also means reading the old books aloud until they start reading you back.

Keep reading

She had practised each letter until the pencil wore soft and grey. Some pages held one character traced twenty times, the loops getting neater as the years went on, and in the margins she had written short notes about the weather and the bean rows. The sweetcorn came in late in 1998. The blackbird nested in the cotoneaster again. On the last page, beside a sketch of the cold frame, she had copied the whole word out carefully, then written underneath it, in English, that the Sweetheart cabbages were through.

I carried the copybook down to the allotment on Thursday and sat on the upturned bucket by the first row of runner beans. I took a lolly stick from my pocket, dipped the pen in the ink I'd brought for the labels, and copied the word the way she had, slowly, letter by letter, so the ink could settle before the damp got to it. When I pushed the stick into the soil, the characters faced the path, and I stayed there a while, reading them back to myself.

More like this

A woman in a standing split yoga pose shows a small black script lettering tattoo on her ribs, in black and grey ink.
Standing split pose with small rib lettering
Woman seen from behind in a bow pose on a rug, with a small black line tattoo on her upper arm near the elbow.
Woman in bow pose with small upper arm tattoo
A woman in an inverted yoga pose shows a black vertical tattoo of angular symbols running along her left side ribs.
Vertical symbol tattoo on a side torso
Black line tattoo of a tree with roots on the upper back of a woman in a forward fold, in fine line botanical style.
Tree with roots tattoo on upper back
Woman in a beach backbend showing a colourful floral sleeve on her raised arm and a black and grey mandala tattoo on her hip.
Floral sleeve and mandala tattoo on a beach backbend
A woman in teal leggings balances upside down on a sandy beach, with a small dark script tattoo on her upper arm.
Yoga pose on a beach with an upper arm tattoo
Black and grey botanical flower tattoo with fine linework on the upper back of a woman in a white crop top, in a forward fold on a yoga mat.
Floral tattoo on upper back
A woman in an inverted yoga pose on a purple mat shows colourful traditional-style tattoos of roses and fruit on her thigh and calves, with leaf designs on her upper arm.
Inverted woman with rose and fruit leg tattoos
Black ink hamsa hand tattoo with ornate detail, centred between the shoulder blades on the upper back of a woman with her palms pressed together behind her.
Hamsa hand tattoo on upper back
Colourful rose and fruit tattoos cover the legs and thigh of a woman in an inverted yoga pose on a purple mat.
Tattooed legs in an inverted yoga pose on a mat
A woman in a yoga headstand on a stone ledge shows a dark sleeve tattoo on her upper arm and forearm, with palm fronds and greenery behind her.
Sleeve tattoo on a woman in a headstand
Back view of a woman with raised arms, showing a large colourful back tattoo of an ornate octopus-like central design and a blue and purple arm sleeve.
Ornate octopus back piece and colour sleeve

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.