Dragonfly tattoo on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A person lies on a black and white checked bedsheet, showing a black and grey dragonfly tattoo on the side of the torso with bold outlines and grey shaded wings. Further tattoos are visible on the upper arm, which includes a faded design, and on the thigh, along with small script on the wrist. The image is a close, soft-focus crop with the tattoos as the main subject.

Ribs Upper arm Thigh Dragonfly Script Floral

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 cook on the Harriet Lund kept her knives rolled in oilcloth and would not let the deckhands near them. Every July, when the dragonflies came over the harbour wall in their hundreds, she left the potatoes half peeled and climbed up to stand at the rail with her sleeves still wet. The crew laughed at her for it. They said she was waiting on a man who had been dead eleven years.

Keep reading

Her husband, Tam Rennie, had worked the same deck before her. One grey morning off the Fair Isle he went over the side after a dropped gaff, and the sea kept him. The old skipper told the young ones a different tale when they asked. He said a dragonfly had sat on the gaff's ash handle that morning, its wings barred black and grey like the sail-cloth, and when Tam reached for the rail it lifted off and flew straight out over the water, as if it knew the way.

The cook never argued with the old man's story. She only said that a dragonfly does not go out to sea, and that any creature which can find its way over open water is hardly lost. So each summer she kept a saucer of sugar water by the galley stove, and on the last night of the fishing season she carried the saucer up to the rail.

The July the Harriet Lund came home with the lowest catch in forty years, a dragonfly was asleep on the flour tin when the cook came down before dawn. She did not shoo it. She cracked the galley door to the cold, lifted the saucer, and watched the creature rise and turn once above the water before the first light took it.