Black linework tattoo on a shoulder showing a striped half-sun with radiating rays, a heart with a bow, and a small cloud, with a partial tattoo at the top left.

Sun, heart and cloud tattoo on a shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo sits on a shoulder, dominated by a striped half-sun with spiked rays and a vertical dividing line. To its right is a heart tied with a bow, a starburst sun above, and long sweeping lines, with a cloud shape at the lower left. The ink is solid black with no grey shading, and the image is taken at a close angle with warm indoor lighting.

Shoulder Sun Heart Bow Cloud Ray Starburst

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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 big top stopped being a big top the winter the canvas went grey and the sawdust turned to mud in the lane behind the lorries. Mr Haldane kept the half-moon banner folded in the caravan anyway, the one with the sun stitched down its middle like a zip, and he let me sleep on the bench beneath it because the heater there worked. Every night before the last show he'd unfold it on the wagon step and tell me the old line about the sun being cut in two so the moon could get a turn at the rope.

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We had one act left that season, a girl called Pearl who could hold a bow between her teeth and loose an arrow at a card tacked to the far wall. The card was always a heart. Nobody in the seats ever saw her miss, though she missed twice that spring, and both times she sat on the edge of the platform with her boots dangling and said the wind had come up from the river. There was no wind. I knew it and so did she.

In October the rain set in for good and the council man came round with his clipboard. Haldane gave him tea and a slice of cake and then walked him out to the field, where the rain had pooled in the shape of the ring. We packed up the next morning. Pearl tied her bow to the handlebar of the bicycle she was taking to the coast, and before she pedalled off she pressed a scrap of cloud-grey felt into my hand, cut into the shape of a heart with a bow pinned on top. I still have it. It has never once been pierced.