Woman seen from behind with a braided updo, showing a small abstract tattoo in red and black ink near the base of her neck on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small red and black abstract tattoo on upper back

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A woman with a braided updo is photographed from behind, showing a small tattoo on the upper back near the neck and shoulder blade. The design is a compact abstract motif made of bold black and red shapes that curve around each other. The background is softly blurred shelving, and the plain white skin makes the red and black ink stand out.

Back Abstract shape Braid

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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

The dyer at the edge of Hollin Wood keeps two vats and two rules, and on the morning you break the second one the frost is still thick on the mill race. Madder goes in the red vat, soot scraped from the bakehouse flue goes in the black, and nobody is to stir them with the same paddle. You stir them with the same paddle. Lukas, the dyer's son, watches you do it and says nothing, which is how you know he is frightened for you.

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What you have made is not cloth. It is two thin curls of soaked silk, floated on the pond below the weir, and you watch them drift together across the skin of the water. The black one is heavy and the red one runs ahead, but each time one slides away the other turns back, as if the old stone at the centre of the pond were a question neither would answer. The carp that lives under the stone comes up to look at them and sinks again.

The villagers come down at dusk to see what the dyer's apprentice has done. Mrs Ashby says it is a fish. Her husband says it is two feathers from a hawk that flew into the vat. Lukas says nothing again. You lift the silk from the water and find it has dried in a shape you did not draw, two curves biting at a single point, and the point is still wet.

By the next morning the pond has frozen to the stone. You kneel at the edge and see both curls beneath the ice, pressed flat together, red over black, still turning with the water that moves underneath. Neither has let go of the other. You leave them where they are, and you do not touch the vats again.