Full back tattoo of an ornate colourful skull surrounded by clouds, beads and red peony flowers, in a neo-traditional style on a bare back.

Ornate colourful skull full back piece

Neo-trad · Back · Colour · Photo

A large full back piece shows a skull with a gold filigree crown, round orange and purple eyes and a gem-set ornament at the centre. Swirling blue clouds, green beads, red peony-like flowers and grey waves fill the background, with bold outlines and smooth shading. The design is almost entirely in vivid colour and spreads across the whole back, with the subject's dark hair falling over the upper shoulders.

Neo-trad Japanese Back Skull Cloud Peony Bead Filigree Gem Wave Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

In the port of Hollin Bay, on the night the tide came up over the fish market, Mother Oda's lantern shop was the last lit window on Rope Street. She painted paper skulls for the dead to carry down to the water, each one crowned with gold foil beaten thin, and each with eyes of cut glass so the spirits could see the way home.

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A boy named Tobin came knocking with a tin full of coins that were not coins, only buttons and a bent spoon. He wanted a skull that would find his father, who had gone out with the herring boats three winters back and never come in. Oda said the lantern needed a red peony at its heart, bright as a fishwife's shawl, and blue clouds painted round it so the spirit would not mistake the sky for the sea.

They worked until St Anne's bell rang two. Oda set a green bead at the brow for every wave the boy counted off, and when the grey ink of the waves was dry, she lit a candle inside the paper head. The eyes glowed orange and purple, like a sun rising behind the hills.

Tobin carried it to the harbour wall and let it go. It drifted past the breakwater, turning slowly, and the tide took it north towards the lighthouse. Next morning a herring boat came in with eleven men aboard and one more who had lost his way in the fog. Oda never told the boy whether the lantern had brought him home, or whether the man had simply rowed towards its light, and she kept the spoon.