A tattoo artist in blue gloves works with a red tattoo machine on a colourful traditional-style snake on the lower back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Snake tattoo being inked by an artist

Traditional · Back · Mixed · Photo

A tattoo artist in blue nitrile gloves holds a red tattoo machine and works on a snake design on the skin of a person's lower back. The snake has bold dark outlines with yellow, orange and green shading, and other tattoos in grey and colour surround it. The shallow focus keeps the artist's hands and the machine sharp while the background softens.

Traditional Back Snake Tattoo machine Glove

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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

Dear Morag, the boat is in at last and I have a day's pay in my pocket and a sore hand from pulling nets, so forgive the smudges. The harbour master's boy has been on the quay asking after the ship's cat, and I told him she went over the side off Lewis in March, which is a lie, she's asleep on the coal sacks as I write. Captain Renfrew came down the companionway at four this morning with his coat unbuttoned and a look on him, and I thought we'd lost the trawl again, but no, he wanted me to hold the lamp while Kessock stitched the snake on his own forearm. Kessock works with a machine he bought off a Liverpool man who went down with the Ceres, and he will not say how he got it. The snake is a green thing with yellow rings and an orange belly, and it bit its own tail at the wrist, and Renfrew sat through it without a word, which I would not have managed.

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What I want you to know is this. When Kessock finished he wiped the ink off with a rag and said, you're next, Tam, and I laughed, because I have never once been sure of anything I could not undo. He only shrugged and said the sea takes what it likes, so a man might as well choose the mark. I have not decided. Perhaps a gull. Perhaps nothing at all.

The tide is turning and the gulls are shouting over the fish market, so I must post this before the post office shuts. Give the girls my love and tell Ewan the rope he wanted is in the shed behind the net loft. Your loving husband, Tam.