Black ink drawing of a sea turtle with a spiral shell, flippers and head drawn in loose brushstrokes on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sea turtle with spiral shell design

Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a simple sea turtle design drawn in bold black ink on a white background. The head, flippers and small rear flipper are rendered as tapered brushstrokes, while the shell is an outline with a spiral pattern in its centre. The composition is centred, with plenty of white space around the turtle.

Sea turtle Turtle Spiral Shell Flipper

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

Your aunt Marnie has already told the vicar twice that the tide will not wait, and now she is pressing a folded paper fan into your hand as the bridesmaids straighten their sashes on the harbour wall. On the fan, in the brisk black brushwork she taught you as a child, a turtle paddles across the paper, its shell wound round with one slow spiral. Nobody else at Porthgwidden has noticed that the spiral runs the wrong way for a sea turtle, turning the way water turns in a bath when the plug goes.

Keep reading

The bride's brother is late. You see him at the top of the lane, tie in his fist, running with the particular dignity of a man who has already missed one ferry. Marnie says the turtle is for luck and for finding your way home, and you tell her that luck is something you carry in a pocket, not a fan. She laughs the way she did when you were nine and insisted the sea had a face.

When the vows are read, the wind takes the first page of the order of service over the wall. It turns twice on the air and lands on the water, where it floats, unfolding, and a real turtle, small and brown and unhurried, noses up beside it. Everyone leans over to look. You keep your eyes on the spiral in your hand, folded shut again, and you count its turns out towards the horizon, one for each year you have been gone and one for each time you came back.