Black and grey tattoo of stars and swirling scrollwork across the lower back and hip, with a bra strap and pink underwear visible at the edges of the frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stars and swirls across lower back and hip

Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo runs across the lower back and hip, built from a cluster of outlined stars of varying sizes with a shaded edge, joined by bold, flowing swirls. A second line of swirls and small stars climbs up the side of the waist. The linework is dark and smooth, with grey shading giving the stars depth, and the photograph is taken from the side with the subject's face out of frame.

Back Star Swirl Scrollwork

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

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The lamp man came round again this morning asking after you, and I told him what I tell everyone, that you're somewhere with more sky than sense. Mam has put your chair back by the range, though nobody sits in it.

Last Thursday the night shift came up late. The cage stuck at the four hundred level for most of an hour, and while they waited the lads stood out on the tip with their faces turned up. Maggie Roper swore she counted nine stars over the headstocks that you can't see from the terrace. I told her she'd been at the gin. But I stood there a while myself, and the sky was that hard clean black you only get after frost, the stars scattered like sparks off a grinder.

I've enclosed a drawing I made on the back of the rent book. I've tried to get the swirls right, the way the coal smoke curls off the bank and doubles back on itself before it goes over the chapel roof. The big stars I shaded heavy on one side, because Dad always said a thing only looks real when it casts a shadow, and he should know, he cast enough of them down the pit.

Come home at Christmas or don't, but if you're getting yourself marked up with that foreign ink, send me the design first so I can tell you if the stars are on crooked. Mind the sea. Love, Ellen.

P.S. Maggie says to tell you the nine stars were definitely there.