Fine line tattoo of a small horned symbol with dots on a woman's upper back, shown in a sepia-toned photograph.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small line symbol on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with wet, dark hair is photographed from behind wearing a black bra, with her back and shoulders filling most of the frame. A small symbol made of thin black lines and dots sits on the upper back near the left shoulder blade. The sepia tone and plain beige backdrop keep the focus on the delicate linework.

Fine line Back Symbol Horn Dot Back

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

Dad counted the flock with a pebble in each pocket, one for every ewe through the gate, and he never once got the same total twice. That spring he came in from the top field with his cap in his hands and said the old tup had gone through the wall at Cwm Du, the one with horns curled like a pair of rusted pliers.

Keep reading

We spent three days hunting him. Mam packed bread and cold bacon in a tea towel and told me to stop crying over a sheep. I was nine, and I wasn't crying over a sheep. The tup was the only thing on that farm that ever looked at me straight. We found him on the fourth morning down in the bracken by the reservoir, horns snagged in a bramble tangle so thick he'd given up pulling. Dad knelt and worked the thorns loose with his penknife, one at a time, humming the hymn he hummed at funerals.

When he was free, the tup didn't run. He stood a long while, shaking his head, then butted the pebble out of Dad's top pocket and walked off uphill as if the whole business had been his idea. Dad picked it up, turned it over, and dropped it in my palm. Four dots, he said, for four days. That night he chalked the same on the back of the barn door, under all the other marks, until the door was more chalk than wood.

I still have that pebble. I keep it in the pocket of my coat for the top field, and every spring I count the ewes twice, once for Dad and once for the tup, who never came back down.