Small black-ink sun with a human face and wavy rays, a traditional-style tattoo on the side ribs of a woman with long blonde hair.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small black sun tattoo on the side ribs

Traditional · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of a sun with a face in its centre, outlined with pointed, wavy rays that radiate outwards. The linework is solid black with light grey shading, and the design sits on the side of the torso against a grey top. The warm, soft-focus photograph shows the tattoo as the clear focal point, with a bed and blurred window in the background.

Traditional Ribs Sun Celestial Face Ray

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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 down, sit down, the fiddler's still tuning and my mouth wants something to do. You'll have heard the Saltergate Ballroom was built over a well, but the old folk knew better: it was built under a sun. Every Saturday the lamp above the floor was lit at eight, and every Saturday a girl called Winnie Cotter came up the stairs in her green shoes, because she had heard the lamp had a face and she wanted to see if it winked.

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It did not wink, not at first. It only watched her across the boards with a long gold squint, and its rays, bent like wire and sharp as tailor's pins, swung slowly whenever the band struck up. One night in October, when the hall was thin and the mothers had gone home, the sun leaned out of its glass cage and asked her to dance. Winnie said he would burn the floor. The sun said the floor had been burned for less, and nobody had ever once asked him for a waltz.

They went round and round past the chalk marks and the spilt lemonade, and wherever his rays touched the boards they left small pale rings, the way a hot cup leaves a ring on a table. Near dawn the sun grew quiet and told her he had to climb back up before the milkmen came. Winnie held out her hand and he took it, and for a moment his face was not gold at all but ordinary, tired, and very kind.

The caretaker still sweeps round a warm patch in the middle of that floor every Saturday, and he says he has never once managed to make it cool.