Black and grey shaded tattoo of a dollar sign inside a sunburst with scrollwork on a calf, shown in two photos.

Dollar sign in sunburst on calf

Calf · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a stylised dollar sign with a heart-like lower curve, set within a radiating sunburst of black rays and framed by a dotted oval border. Below, ornamental scrolls and leaf-like flourishes fade into soft grey shading. The work is mainly black and grey with subtle reddish-brown tones in the skin, and two side-by-side photos show the calf from different angles.

Calf Dollar sign Sunburst Scrollwork Ornament Leaves Oval frame

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

You are the only one awake on Halford Street at ten to four, and the flour in the air has gone the colour of weak tea under the one bulb you have left burning. The dough is already proving in its wicker baskets. You know the rhythm without thinking: knock back, shape, slash, load. Your uncle's oven door, the old brass one with a round vent cut into its top like a rising sun, ticks as it heats.

Keep reading

On the shelf above the sink sits his day book, swollen with damp, and in it every sack of flour he ever bought is logged beside a small hooked mark, an S crossed through with two strokes. He called it the honest mark. You never asked what it meant. Tonight you turn to the page where he wrote, in his looping hand, Mrs Okonedo, two loaves on tick, pay when the lorry comes in. Beside the entry the mark has been drawn over and over, the pencil pressed so hard the paper has nearly torn through.

The lorry was late for three weeks, then late for good. You had thought the debt was a wrong that could be settled in a column and forgotten. Then you pull the first tray from the oven, the crust cracks with that thin high sound, and the window behind the counter starts to pale over the chimneys. The light comes in low and fans out in long bars across the racks, exactly the way he used to describe it, a sunburst you could sell by the slice.

You wrap two loaves in brown paper, write the date across the top in pencil, and leave the book open at the page. Then you carry the bread out to the step, warm against your ribs, and watch the sun lift over the rooftops, its rays spilling down the street until, for once, the sum comes out even.