Collage of five photographs showing black tree of life tattoos on a back, a foot, a lower back and a circular design on a upper back.

Tree of life tattoos on back and foot

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

This collage shows five photographs of tree of life designs on skin, including a branching tree spanning a bare back, a small tree on the top of a foot above a sandal strap, and a tree with birds and butterflies on a lower back. The linework is mostly fine and detailed in black and grey, with some areas of shading and a lace-like pattern at the base of the first tree. The arrangement is a mix of close and wide shots with soft lighting and varied backgrounds.

Botanical Blackwork Back Ankle Tree of life Tree Root Branches Leaves Bird Butterfly Circle Foot Back

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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

Put the kettle on again, Tam, because this part takes longer than the rest. No, leave the lid off. The tree listens better with steam in the room. You want to know why the old rowan stands behind Hollins Farm with its roots lifted out of the bank like a fist of knuckles? Because the first Mrs Gaunt planted it, the one who came up the valley with a sack of seed and a grudge against the river.

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She had three daughters, and the river took two of them in the spring floods. The third, Annis, went out each morning to the edge of the wood with a basket and came back with birds in her hair. The birds came with her because she fed them from her palm, and where the birds landed the butterflies followed, and where the butterflies followed the bramble grew thick enough to hide a child. Folk said the wood liked her. Folk said a lot of things that winter.

When the blight came to the barley, Annis went down the lane at dusk and knelt under the rowan with her knife. She cut a thin ring in the bark, the way you'd mark a boundary stone, and told the tree what the village owed it. Next morning the roots had crept under three gardens and up through the cellar floor of the mill. The barley came back, and so did the river, though it ran on the far side of the wood after that.

And the Gaunt girl? Nobody saw her go. Her basket was found hung on the lowest branch, full of cold ash and a single red berry, and the birds have sung down to the village ever since. So when you're gathering your own bits of wood for the stove, leave that ring alone. Put your hand flat on the bark instead. That's her, that is, keeping the count.