Three people seen from behind, each with a matching black bare tree and birds tattoo on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching bare trees with birds on three backs

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Three people stand shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the camera, each with a small black tattoo of a bare tree with branches and birds on the upper back. The tattoos are fine line work with simple solid detail and no shading, and they are placed near the shoulder blades. The indoor setting has wooden cabinets and warm light, and the tattoos are the focus of the composition.

Fine line Back Shoulder Tree Bare tree Bird Matching tattoo

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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

We tied the boat up below Hatfield lock the night the frost came down, and Mam sat on the cabin step with the kettle and counted the rooks going over. Eleven. She always counted. Dad used to say a bird on a wire was a promise and a flock was a bill, and she'd laugh and say he'd made that up to annoy her.

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The barge was called the Wren, though nobody had painted a wren on her in forty years. Our Tom had the tiller that winter and I had the ropes, and we argued about the coal the way other families argue about church. Tom wanted to sell up and take the cut to Ely with a load of sugar beet. I wanted to stop somewhere for once. We had never stayed anywhere longer than a week.

In February the ice held us against the towpath at Brandon Creek, and the willow by the lock lost its last leaves overnight. Tom walked the bank with his hands in his pockets and came back with a snapped twig, saying it had the same shape as the tree Dad had scratched on the cabin door before he died. We cut a pair of small trees into the grey paint with a penknife, fine as hair, then sat in the wheelhouse watching the birds come down to the stubble.

When the thaw came, Mam said she wanted one too. We went to a man in Ely who worked out of the back of a bakery. He drew the same tree three times on tracing paper and told us the birds were the hard part. Mam sat with her back to the window for an hour and never once complained. Afterwards she said the boat could go wherever it liked now, because the tree was coming with us, and she'd always know where we were.