Fine line tattoo of a mountain range with a red dragon flying above it, sitting on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Dragon above a mountain range on upper back

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

A mountain range is drawn in black linework with hatched shading, with a small red mark on one slope and a few small birds or tree shapes in the sky to the left. A red dragon in outline with a few red wing details flies above the central peak. The shading is concentrated on the shadowed sides of the mountains, and the composition sits diagonally across the upper back.

Fine line Back Mountain Dragon Bird Landscape

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 snow had come early that year, and by the second week of December the sheep were coming down off the top pasture in a grey line, complaining all the way. Dad sent me up the last field with the dog and a torch, though the light was still good enough to see the mountain standing over the farm like a man who had forgotten his coat. Ours is the one with the notch in its shoulder, the one the valley folk call Hob's Anvil, though nobody had climbed it in living memory.

Keep reading

Gran used to say the red light on the north face was a window. She said a dragon had lived in those cliffs before the sheep and the walls, and it kept one lamp burning so it could count its gold in the dark. I told her that was nonsense, the sort of thing you say to a child who won't eat cabbage. She only smiled and pointed at the rooks wheeling over the far fields, which always went quiet when the wind turned.

That night the wind did turn. I stood at the top gate with the torch off, and the red spot on the slope was steady, then it flickered, then it moved, sliding across the rock like a coal being carried. Something high above it opened its wings against the stars, and I felt the ground shift under my boots. The dog would not come near me. I thought of Gran's voice and found I was not laughing.

In the morning I found the last ewe standing in the lower field, unharmed, her fleece steaming. Nobody else believed me about the light. Dad said it was a lamp some shepherd had left burning long ago. I have not told him the wings were the colour of rust, or that the sky above the peak was full of birds flying the wrong way. Each winter since, I leave our kitchen lamp in the window and count the sheep twice, just in case.