Black ink tattoo of a tree inside a bold, brushed circle, placed on the upper back of a person with auburn hair.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tree inside a brush circle on upper back

Japanese · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a solid black tree silhouette with a bare, branching canopy set inside a thick, ragged circle that looks like a brush stroke. The linework is bold and mostly solid black with small ink spatter dots around the outer ring, and the lighter skin inside the circle gives it a strong contrast. It is centred on the upper back, photographed from behind with the subject's head and neck partly visible at the top of the frame.

Japanese Blackwork Back Tree Circle Brushstroke Silhouette

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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

Mrs Okafor had kept the bonsai on the potting bench for thirty-one years, and in all that time nobody had ever seen her cut it. She watered it at dawn with a tin can that had a rose painted on the spout, turned it a quarter each Sunday so the light fell evenly, and told the children who came over the wall that the tree was older than the house. Her grandson Tobi did not believe that. He thought it was only a tree that had decided to stay small.

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In February, when the frost lay grey on the gravel, she asked him to bring the ink. It was the stiff black stuff she kept in a jar with a cracked lid, and the brush was older still, its bristles gone soft at the tip. She told him to hold the paper steady and not to speak. Then she drew a circle in a single pull, fast and ragged, lifting the brush before the stroke could close, so that a gap stayed open at the top like a door left ajar. A few drops flew off onto the table and she let them lie where they fell.

Inside the ring she painted the tree. She did not paint leaves. She painted the bare crown, every branch reaching out and splitting into thinner black lines, and the trunk leaning a little to the left as if listening for something beyond the wall. When she had finished she laid the brush across the jar and sat back with her hands in her lap.

"There," she said. "Now it's finished, and it can rest."

Tobi looked at the page for a long time, then at the real tree on the bench, and saw for the first time that the two shapes had always been the same.