Black and grey tattoo of a winged crest with a sword and a triangle, sitting on the upper back between the shoulder blades.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hylian crest on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a symmetrical crest with a sword at the top and centre, a dark triangle set within a ring, and angled rays spreading out on either side like wings. The linework is bold and black, with grey shading on the rays and blade that gives them some depth. The image is a close, straight-on photo of the upper back, with the design filling most of the frame against a soft, slightly blurred background.

Back Crest Triangle Sword Wing Ray Emblem

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

Dear Nell, the boat is finished at last, though Mr Abernethy would not let us launch her until the crest was cut into the transom. You will laugh when I tell you what it looks like. A blade stands straight up the middle, a triangle sits inside a ring of iron-grey, and rays fan out on either side like the wings of some bird that has forgotten how to fly.

Keep reading

He carved it himself over three nights with a gouge he keeps wrapped in oilcloth. I asked why it mattered and he said a boat wants a sign on her so the sea knows whose she is. He cut the triangle deepest, so the grain stood proud around it, and when I ran my thumb over it the wood was warm from the stove.

Last Tuesday the Gannet Sue went out in a squall off the Skerries with only four of us aboard. The mast went and the foresail tore clean, and I thought that was the end of us. But when I looked back from the tiller the crest was catching the lamplight, the triangle black and steady, and the wind seemed to come round and push from the quarter we needed. We made Holm Quay by dawn with the pumps going and not a man lost.

I do not believe the carving did it, Nell, and neither does Abernethy, who says the sea has no truck with carpentry. But he has asked me to cut the same mark into my own oar, and I have been practising on driftwood every evening since. Write back soon and tell me the lambs have come.