Pencil drawing of a tattoo design with a spiral, a row of arrows, two figures standing in a circle and the lettering We can live like Jack and Sally if we want.

Spiral design with Jack and Sally quote

Black and grey · Flash

A charcoal or pencil drawing of a tattoo design built around a large spiral that curls into a dark, shaded swirl at its base. Two small standing figures sit within a circle at the centre, framed by a crossed motif, a ring of arrowhead shapes and a curved band of hand-drawn lettering. The image is in black and grey with soft graphite shading and no colour.

Spiral Arrow Figure Circle Lettering Swirl Quote

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 last ticket sold on the Tuesday, to a boy who wanted to see the knife woman, and Mags Tolley gave him his money back because there was no knife woman any more, only Mags, who had sold the knives to a scrapyard in Stoke in March. We packed the big top in the order it had gone up, which is the wrong order, and nobody said so.

Keep reading

Dad painted the arrows on the boards years ago, red triangles running from the ring to the gate so folk wouldn't trip going home in the dark. Eleven were still bright. The twelfth had flaked to grey, and the arrow beside it pointed at the caravans instead of the road. I stood in the sawdust with a tin of primer and considered leaving it that way.

Nell wanted the high wire coiled tight on the drum, the way you'd keep a spring. I wanted it loose. We argued about it the way couples argue about curtains, which is to say about something else. In the end I walked the wire one last time with nobody watching, slow, arms out, and at the far platform I simply kept going and stepped down onto the spiral of old rope we'd laid on the grass, a dark coil like a bruise, and it held me.

From down there the arrows all pointed at the same small gate, which was open. When I looked up, Nell was already painting over the twelfth, turning it back toward the ring, as if we were staying.