Photograph of a small red bow tattoo with a black outline on the upper hip of a person wearing patterned underwear.

Red bow tattoo on upper hip

Other · Colour · Photo

A close photograph, taken from behind and to the side, of a small red bow with a bold black outline on the upper hip. The bow is filled with flat red ink and has a simple, graphic shape, and the rest of the body is out of focus or cropped. The background is a plain wall and a cluttered floor, and the person's underwear has a white Hello Kitty print.

Other Bow Ribbon

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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

Sit closer, the lot of you, and mind the gull on the rail, he's had his eye on your pasty. Did I ever tell you about Mrs Pell and the red ribbon? She kept the shop at the top of Fish Lane, the one with the brass bell that jangled whenever the wind came up off the harbour. She sold everything a body could want to tie up: bootlace, lace, string for the crab pots, and one spool of ribbon the colour of a port light that nobody bought, because it cost more than a week's herring.

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One wet March a lad came in from the Osprey with his hand wrapped in a rag. He'd caught it in a winch. He asked for something to bind the cut, and she gave him a length of that red without a word. He tried to pay her in coppers and she waved him off. He came back the Saturday after with the ribbon washed and pressed, and she told him to keep it. He tied it in a flat little bow on the shelf of his bunk so he'd see it each morning before the tide turned.

After that, every boat that went out that spring found a bow tied to the iron post at the harbour mouth, small and neat, with a black edge where the red stopped. Folk said it was superstition. The vicar said it was tidy. Nobody thought to ask why she only ever tied them for men who had come into the shop asking for something.

The fog came in June and sat on the water three days. On the third night the bell over the shop gave no sound at all, and Mrs Pell was out on the wall with her scissors and her last length of red, her apron soaked through. She tied the bow at the post by feel, then struck a match and held it up. Somewhere past the bar, a light swung left, then right, and turned for home.