Colour tattoo of a hot air balloon with three portrait medallions, a lettered basket and an anchor, in neo-traditional style with dotwork, on a person's upper back.

Hot air balloon with portraits on upper back

Neo-trad · Back · Colour · Photo

A hot air balloon fills the upper back, with three portrait medallions of a bearded man, a woman with her hair up and a man in a hat set in the envelope. A lettered wicker basket hangs beneath with an anchor and green weight below it, and a halo of dotwork stipples surrounds the balloon. Bold black outlines frame the design, with red, teal, yellow and green colour fills.

Neo-trad Dotwork Back Hot air balloon Portrait Anchor Basket Lettering Dot

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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

Dearest Nell, the envelope is patched again and Mr Harrow has given up pretending he can sew, so I have been mending it myself by lamplight with the basket still smelling of paraffin. You will laugh, but I am the one who holds the anchor now. Harrow says a girl with strong wrists is worth two men who drink, and he has painted my face into the medallion beside his own to prove it, though he made my hair far too tidy.

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Yesterday the wind came round off the Mendips at noon, when it had no business to, and the whole crew bellowed at once. The green weight was meant to sit on the grass like a sensible sinker, but the rope had frayed and I was dragged four yards through the stubble with my boots skidding. Constable Pye's boy caught my skirt in both fists, and the balloon rose a foot with nobody in the basket, which Harrow says is the closest thing to a miracle he has seen in the trade.

Afterwards we sat in the field and counted the stitches. Forty-one in the envelope alone. The words painted round the basket have faded since the sign-writer came through, so they read only ALL YOU and then a smear, and Mrs Ketteridge insists it should say ALL YOU NEED, that anyone who has ever let go of something knows it perfectly well. I think she is right, and I think I am not ready to let go yet.

Tell Thomas the anchor stays on the ground where it belongs, and so do I, for the present. Write back soon and send the blue thread he promised, because the seam at the top will not hold without it.

Yours in patches, Bess