Black Polynesian tribal tattoo with spirals, bands and geometric motifs running across a person's ribs and side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Polynesian tribal tattoo on the ribs

Blackwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large black tribal design covers the side of the torso, from the ribs towards the hip, with a bold central spiral surrounded by hooked and angular shapes. The linework is solid black with no visible shading, and the design is shown in a close, straight-on view against a light background. The composition wraps around the body, with the upper band of zigzags and the lower curving forms balancing the spiral.

Blackwork Ribs Tribal Polynesian Spiral Geometric pattern Zigzag Ornament

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

The gate had frozen to its post overnight, so Ruth Pell took the claw hammer to the hinge pin while the ewes stood in the lee of the barn and judged her. Her knuckles had gone past cold into a dull ache, and her breath clouded over the iron every time she swung. Behind her the yard was white to the walls, and the water trough had a skin of ice thick enough to hold a sparrow.

Keep reading

The sea chest had come down from the loft the week before, when the thaw made the roof drip onto the hay. Her father had carried it home from the islands in 1952 with a wooden beater inside, flat and paddle-shaped, its face cut with a spiral that started small at the handle and wound out to the edge, ringed by hooked shapes and a border of sharp zigzags like rain coming off a slate. Ruth had never known what the marks meant. Her father had only said they were for keeping things in order, and then he had gone out to check the top field and not come back until dark.

She sat on the chest now with the hammer across her knees and ran her thumb along the outer curl, feeling the old ridges where the carving ran deepest. A spiral like that needed warmth to open, the way a fern did in spring, and this was the dead middle of January. She thought about the letter in the tin under the stairs, the one with the foreign stamp she did not recognise, and how long she had left it unanswered.

When the pin finally gave, the gate swung wide and the ewes came through in a single grey rush toward the hay. Ruth stayed where she was, the beater cold against her palm, and let the gate hang open to the white field. The letter could wait one more day.