Back view of a man with a large black tribal tattoo covering his back and upper arms, with bold solid shapes and fine interlocking patterns.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Full back tribal tattoo with arm sleeves

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A man is photographed from behind, showing a large tattoo covering most of his back and extending onto both upper arms. The design uses bold solid black shapes, chevrons, triangles, spirals and curving bands, with the untattooed skin left as light negative space between the lines. The image is shot indoors with even lighting and the composition is centred on the back.

Blackwork Geometric Back Upper arm Back piece Tribal pattern Spiral Chevron Triangle

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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

Dear Tane, the chevrons on the new canoe are wrong again, and your uncle says he will not sand them a third time until you come home and show him how the lines should meet. I have told him you are in the city now and busy with your wages, but he only grunts and goes back to the hull.

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Let me tell you what your grandmother told me when I was your age. Every row of triangles is a wave that has already passed, and the pale gaps between them are the water the wave left behind. If you cut the black too thick, the sea has no room to breathe. She used to make me cover the whole board in charcoal first, then lift the light parts out with a shell, so I learned to see the empty spaces before I ever touched the dark ones.

The spirals are harder. They must turn the same way as the current off the reef at the south point, or the boat will not hold its line in a crossing. I took the old sketch down from the rafter and measured it against the tide table pinned by the door. Everything agrees except the spiral at the stern, which ran twice as wide as it should. I think the one who drew it was thinking of a particular fish rather than the water, and it made me laugh to imagine him at the bench with his tongue between his teeth.

Come home for the launch on the fourteenth. Bring the proper pen, the one with the bone grip, and bring your hands steady. We will sit under the breadfruit tree with the light coming through the fronds, and you can show your uncle where the lines should meet. He is too proud to say so, but he has been measuring the gaps every evening, waiting for you.

Love, Aunty Meleane