Traditional style colour tattoo of a red and white striped lighthouse with lightning bolts and waves on a man's upper arm, with a skull and nautical elements nearby.

Lighthouse and lightning sleeve on an arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A red and white spiral-striped lighthouse sits at the centre of the design, framed by a dark cloud border, yellow and orange lightning bolts and a red glowing sky. Below it, black and teal waves and a rope, anchor and other nautical motifs continue down the arm, with bold black outlines and flat solid fills. The image is shot at an angle in an indoor setting, with a dark navy top covering the upper part of the arm.

Traditional Upper arm Lighthouse Lightning Wave Cloud Skull Rope Anchor Ship Sea

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,

Keep reading

The relief boat came in on Tuesday with the coal and your mother's tin of shortbread, which the gulls have already had two of. Mr Pardoe says the new lamp will be lit by Michaelmas, the brass one from Glasgow with the glass that doesn't cloud. I told him the old revolving gear has never once failed me in eleven winters, and he said that was exactly what the Board would say before it did.

Last night the storm came up out of the west with lightning walking the water like a man looking for his hat. I stood in the gallery with the wind trying to take the door off its hinges and watched the red stripes turn on the tower, round and round, the same as they have every night since your grandfather painted them. Off the Skerry a trawler was stood in the breakers with her lights gone. I kept the beam on her for four hours. Near dawn her single flare went up, small and orange, and I wept like a fool into the paraffin rags.

They towed her in this morning. Eleven men, all breathing, and one of them asked me whether the light had been on the whole night or only for them. I told him it had been on for every boat that was lost before and every boat still to come, and that he should not take it personally.

I have pinned the flare's cartridge case above my bunk. Come at the spring tides if you can. Bring the good oilskins.

Your loving uncle, Tom