Back of a woman with her hands in her hair, covered in a colourful full back tattoo of cartoon characters, a mermaid and a castle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Full back piece of cartoon characters and castle

Back · Colour · Photo

A woman is seen from behind with both hands raised to her hair, her face turned away from the camera. Across her back is a large, densely packed tattoo of cartoon characters, including a mermaid with red hair, a fairy-like figure, a lion and a castle with towers. The linework is bold and the shading is soft, with bright colour dominating the piece against a plain, warm-toned background.

Back Cartoon character Mermaid Castle Lion Fairy

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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 lamp was never the problem; it was the glass. Every Thursday you climbed the hundred and twelve iron steps with a chamois in your apron pocket and the storybook your grandmother had sent from Penzance, its cover soft as bread. Below, the tide came over the rocks like someone pouring out a bath, and the gulls argued about it.

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On the third Thursday of November a girl with red hair was sitting on the gallery rail, one hand tangled in the wire, the other holding a comb she had clearly taken from a sailor. She told you the castle was hers, the one on the cover with seven towers, the one that sank when the old king refused to share his gold. She said the lion in the book was her brother and had been stuck in the paint for a hundred years. You didn't believe her. You polished the lens anyway and let her talk.

She wanted the light switched off for one night so the ships could find their way down to the castle. You said the ships would wreck on the Skerry. She shrugged and said the ships always found the castle eventually, they just never got to keep it. Then she slipped back over the rail, and you leaned out and saw nothing but black water and a scatter of pale, bright scales turning under the waves, like a painted page lifting in the wind.

In the morning the storybook lay open on the kitchen table at the picture of the castle, and each tower had a new gold line running down its side, fresh as ink. Your grandmother's letter said she had never once painted in the margins. You kept the lamp burning every night after that, and you never told anyone why the seventh tower glowed a little brighter than the rest.