Back of a person with teal braided hair decorated with leaves and twigs, showing a colourful sun and sea tattoo on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sun and ship tattoo on upper back

Back · Colour · Photo

A tattoo on the upper back shows a large sun with radiating rays, with a ship or sailing scene and sea-like lines below it. The work appears to use soft yellow, pink and blue tones, with the linework largely blended into the shading. The subject is photographed from behind with teal hair in a loose braid threaded with leaves and bare twigs, against a blurred green background.

Back Sun Ship Sea Braid Leaves Twig

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 tide was turning at Greywater Reach and Captain Ilse Varrow still had a passenger to put ashore. The sun hung low over the harbour mouth like a coin nobody had bothered to pocket, and every wave it touched went gold, then pink, then a bruised blue that spread out to the edge of the world.

Keep reading

"It's not going down," said Tam, the cabin boy, squinting from the bowsprit. He had been saying it since noon. The old salts of Vellan Cove had a saying about suns that linger: they were owed something, and sooner or later someone would have to pay.

Ilse had no time for superstition. She set the wheel and watched the sails fill, and the Mariel Sayre ran hard for the skerry where the lamp-keeper's daughter waited with a brass lantern and a satchel of letters that had to reach the mainland before the next frost. The girl's name was Nell Tarrant, and she had not spoken once since they left Vellan.

They raised the skerry as the last of the sun slid into the sea. Nell stepped onto the rocks, lifted her lantern, and the light ran out across the water in long bright threads, catching the sails and the foam and the sun's own reflection until the whole sea looked stitched together. Tam swore softly. Ilse didn't stop him.

When the lantern went dark, the sun was gone too, but the water still glowed the colour of old brass. "Owed," Nell said, and handed up the satchel. Ilse tied the last knot and turned the Mariel Sayre for home.