Close photograph of a watercolour-style tattoo on the side of the torso, with a black pine tree silhouette over soft green and pink colour bands.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pine tree silhouette over green and pink washes

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A black pine tree silhouette with ragged, brushed edges sits in the lower part of the design. Above it, soft green and pink bands of colour fade out at their edges, giving a loose, painted look. The tattoo fills the frame diagonally, with the dark silhouette creating a strong contrast against the lighter washes.

Ribs Pine tree Conifer Silhouette

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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

The wagons were dragged into the lee of the forest on the last Sunday of October, because Mr Tallis could no longer pay for the diesel to take them further north, and because the big top had torn along its seam in a wind nobody had thought to forecast. You stand at the caravan step with a flask of tea gone cold and count what is left: four clowns, two lions already sold to a zoo near Perth, an elephant called Dorothy who refuses to climb back into her trailer, and you.

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The pines were standing here long before the circus and have no interest in its troubles. They rise black against the field, their tops ragged as brushed ink, and the company's ring of sad little lamps seems to shrink beneath them. Around nine the sky begins to move. Green light unrolls above the ridge in long soft bands, shot through with pink that fades at the edges as if someone had washed the heavens with a wide, tired brush.

You fetch the last coil of rope from the stores and throw it over the lowest branch of the two tallest trees, the way you once rigged the high wire under a canvas roof that rang with brass. Your hands remember the knots even if your knees have opinions. By the time the others come out in dressing gowns and wellington boots, you are already on the line, arms out, feet finding the old rhythm while the needles creak around you.

Nobody applauds. Dorothy lifts her trunk and trumpets once, which will have to count. You reach the far tree, step onto the soft moss, and look back at the field where the big top is only a pale hump in the dark. The lights above do not applaud either. They simply go on being beautiful over the pines, and for the length of one breath the whole sky is your ring.