Colour tattoo of Van Gogh's Starry Night in a circle on the side of the ribs, with swirling blue sky, yellow stars and a dark cypress tree.

Starry Night scene in a circle on the ribs

Ribs · Colour · Photo

A circular tattoo reproduces a night sky with swirling blue brushstroke-like bands, pale yellow stars and a large glowing crescent moon. A dark cypress tree rises on the left, and a small village with dark hills sits along the bottom edge. Soft blended shading and bright blues, yellows and oranges dominate, set against a plain area of skin with a gloved hand holding it at the edge of the frame.

Ribs Night sky Star Crescent moon Hill Swirl

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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 sign for the last services says forty miles, and you believe it for about four. After that the road becomes a grey ribbon laid over the desert, and the only light is the dashboard and a moon so bright it seems to be pulling the sand up off the ground. You keep the window down because the radio died somewhere past the state line, and the air smells of hot rock giving up its heat.

Keep reading

Your mother used to say the sky over a desert was never really black, only blue that had forgotten its colours. She had a print pinned above the kitchen sink, all those swirling bands of paint, stars as fat as coins, and a dark cypress standing at the edge like a raised finger. You used to think the little village at the bottom was the most important part, the only thing in the picture a person could live in. Now you are the only person for miles who isn't asleep.

Near Carrow Wells the road dips toward a dry wash, and something glints on the verge: a paint tin, lid rusted shut, rolled into the scrub by someone who did not want it. You stop. Inside, under a folded cloth, is a small round board, the paint dried to a crust, showing a sky you recognise before you can name it. A crescent moon, a cypress, a clutch of houses. Someone had tried to fit the whole night into a circle the size of a saucer.

You sit on the tailgate with it in your lap until headlights come up behind you, slow and patient. You lift a hand. The driver lifts one back. You carry the board to the passenger seat and strap it in, the way you would with anything that had come a long way to find you, and you drive on toward the lights of the town, the blue swirl catching the glow of the dashboard all the way in.