Neo-traditional style tattoo of a skull with pink heart eyes, pink dice and nautical stars across the top of a foot, shown in two side-by-side photos.

Skull, dice and nautical stars on a foot

Neo-trad · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

Two side-by-side photographs show the same foot with a tattoo of a grey skull with pink heart-shaped eyes, flanked by pink dice and a black and grey bow shape with flower details. Pink nautical stars and smaller grey shaded stars trail up towards the ankle, with soft grey shading behind the motifs. The pink and grey palette is set against a dark background, with bold outlines and clear, even colour fill.

Neo-trad Ankle Skull Dice Heart Star Bow Flower

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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

Mind the lamp, you lot, and stop shoving along the bench. Right, where was I? Ah, Ned Ruddock and the dice of Scarrow Harbour. Ned came up from the slipway one wet November night with nothing in his pockets but a pair of dice carved from a drowned pig's rib and painted the pink of a gull's throat. He had a lie ready too, though he hadn't decided yet which one to tell.

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The Gull and Anchor had a skull on the counter that Old Mags Pellow kept for luck. Its eyes were two cut-glass hearts, and it grinned at every bet made across that wood. Ned played her at the hour the tide turned. She put up her husband's rowboat. He put up the three stars he'd steered by since he was a boy, the ones that sat over the breakwater like lanterns hung for the lost. On Scarrow, a star counts for more than a boat, and everybody in the room knew it.

He rolled sixes three times running. Mags went quiet and reached for the skull, and the skull, as I've always said, seemed to wink. The stars were hers, and she took them by the simple means of tipping the table. Ned walked out into the dark with nothing, and the next morning three little grey stars were climbing over the water where his had been, never once setting.

So if you're out past the breakwater some black night and you see three small stars rising up off the sea like they're searching for a boat, don't whistle at them. Just row for the lamp and keep your hands off the dice.