Black and white flash design of a tribal sun face surrounded by spirals, chevrons and bold curved blackwork shapes, with no body part shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Polynesian-style sun face and spiral design

Black and grey · Flash

The design centres on a stylised sun-like face with heavy brow lines, almond eyes and a zigzag mouth, framed by a ring of pointed rays. Surrounding it are large spirals, curved tail shapes, triangular notches and fine parallel hatching that fills the panels on the right and lower edge. It is drawn in solid black ink on white with no greys or colour, and the shapes are arranged to flow across a tall, teardrop-shaped composition.

Sun Face Spiral Triangle Wave Tribal pattern Hatching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sun on the prow had no mouth when the fleet left Vaiho, only the brow lines my grandfather cut into it, heavy as storm cloud. I was given the chisel that season because my hands were steady and my father's were not. Each night, while the men mended sails under the lamp-nut trees, I worked the rays outward from the face, one notch at a time, counting them the way you count breaths on a long swim.

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On the eleventh night the wind came round from the east and would not go back. Ruo, who steered, said the sun had to be finished before we could ask it for calm, and that a face without a mouth could not speak to the sea. So I cut the zigzag mouth by lamplight, and my hand shook, and the teeth came out uneven. Ruo laughed and said the sea would not mind a crooked grin.

The spirals were the hard part. Each one has to be cut from the outside in, otherwise it closes on itself and traps the water. I started the great curl on the stern and began to hatch the panels in fine parallel lines, the way my mother taught me, so that the light would catch every groove and throw it back at the sky.

We raised land on the fourteenth morning, a grey smudge the old man at the bow swore was not there. When I laid my palm flat on the wood, the grain was warm under the sun. The mouth was still crooked. Ruo would not let me recut it. Some things, she said, are better once they have been seen to laugh at the sea.