Traditional-style colour tattoo of a smiling sun with closed eyes and flame-like rays, placed on a person's back beside a purple patterned strap.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Smiling sun with closed eyes on back

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

A sun with a serene face, closed eyes and a smile sits at the centre of the design, surrounded by wavy, flame-like rays. Bold black outlines define the features and rays, with orange, yellow and red shading that gives the face a soft gradient. The tattoo is centred on bare skin, with a purple patterned strap visible at the top left of the frame.

Traditional Back Sun Ray Celestial Smile

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

The snow had sealed the Crook and Lantern for eleven days when Mrs Dunning asked me to paint a new sun on the sign board above the bar. The old moon had flaked down to bare wood, and she was firm about the face. 'Nobody comes in out of the cold for a frown,' she said, then went back to counting coal scuttles by the stove.

Keep reading

I worked in the back room with the shutters half open so the light fell thin and white across the boards. I mixed ochre with a drop of vermilion until the orange ran warm, and I gave the rays long wavy tongues, the way a candle flame leans when someone opens a door. Her instruction had been the eyes. 'Closed,' she said. 'The sun's had a long winter too, and it's earned a nap.' So I drew two crescents of contentment and a small curved smile, and outlined everything in black so it would carry across the bar room.

Outside, a man named Pell kept shovelling the lane, and every hour I heard the scrape of his blade draw nearer to the gate. On the twelfth morning the lane was open and the sign was dry. Mrs Dunning climbed the stepladder herself, hooked the board back on its chains, and stood there a long while looking up at it. Then the first drip came off the eaves onto the sill, and she smiled, the same easy shape I had painted, and said the sun was back on duty.