Colour tattoo of a sun with a human face and long wavy rays on the side of the ribs, shown in orange, yellow and brown tones.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sun with a face on the side ribs

Traditional · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A sun with a stylised face sits at the centre of the image, its rays spreading outwards in fine, tapering points. The linework is dark and detailed with some hatched shading, and the orange, yellow and brown ink gives it a vintage engraved look. The tattoo is shown against bare skin on the side of a torso, with a black top above and denim with patterned fabric below.

Traditional Ribs Sun Face Ray

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Rain had been coming down on the Saturday market since before seven, and Maud had given up on the awning, which sagged over her trestle like a wet sail. Under the tin tray she kept the things that didn't sell to tourists: almanac plates, a cracked magic lantern, and a copper print of a sun with a sleepy face, its rays cut in fine tapering points. She had priced it at four pounds and nobody had asked.

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At eleven a boy in a borrowed anorak ducked under the tarpaulin, dripping onto her ledger. He had a dented tobacco tin and a fistful of coins that smelled of the river. 'My nan said there was a sun like this on the wall of the Crown,' he said. 'It went missing the winter the pub flooded. Have you got it?' Maud said the print was not that sun, only a copy of one, but he kept looking at it the way people look at a biscuit they remember from childhood.

She wrapped it in brown paper while the rain found its way into the folds. The boy counted out his coins, four of them, one short, and she took them anyway. He held the parcel against his chest like a loaf. Then the cloud over Exmouth Market tore open, and for a minute every wet stall steamed and every puddle caught a yellow spot of light.

'Ta,' he said, and walked off into the glare without looking back. Maud pulled the tarpaulin tight and lifted the tin tray to put the till away. Beneath it lay a second copy of the sun, the same sleepy face, the same fine rays, and she could not for the life of her remember putting it there.