Black and grey tattoo across the upper back reading REDNECK in gothic block lettering, with a strand of barbed wire beneath it.

Redneck lettering and barbed wire on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo spells REDNECK in bold, gothic-style block capitals across the upper back, with a barbed wire band running below the lettering. The letters and wire are filled in solid black with grey shading, and the edges look crisp. The skin around the design is plain, and the composition is centred on the shoulder blades with a thin chain visible at the neck.

Lettering Back Lettering Chain

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

Dessie Carrow had strung wire on the Moor Edge boundary for thirty-one winters, and he still reckoned barbed wire was the only honest thing a farmer ever bought. The new lad, Tomasz from the bus stop at Flaxby, held the coil as if it might bite him, which it would. "Hands below the twist," Dessie said. "And never let it sing."

Keep reading

They had the last half mile to do before the rain came over the tops. The quad would not take the peat, so every strainer post went in by hand, Dessie tamping with the heavy maul while Tomasz kept the wire tight with the come-along. Tomasz asked why the old line was so vicious, two strands with the points angled out like a row of hooks. Dessie spat into the heather and told him about the Hallam brothers, who had fenced their father's ewes off the common in 1971 and sat in a parked Land Rover every night after with a shotgun across their knees and the radio tuned to nothing. Nobody crossed that line for six years. Nobody needed to.

By four the cloud had come down over Crow Hill and the first drops hit the back of Tomasz's neck. He dropped the last clip, swore, and sucked a bead of blood from his thumb. Dessie laughed for the first time that day, a dry sound like a gate hinge. "There you go. Now you're a fencer."

They walked back along the line with the wind getting up. Somewhere behind them the wire began to hum, a thin high note that came and went with the gusts, and Tomasz stopped to listen. Dessie did not stop. "That's just the wire," he said, not turning round. "Keep walking and it'll quit."