Solid black tribal tattoo running down the spine and widening over the lower back of a shirtless man photographed from behind, with kite surfers in the sky.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal back tattoo with spiral motifs

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A man seen from behind, with his head turned away from the camera, shows a large tribal-style tattoo running from the top of his spine to the base of his back. The design has a fine line that narrows at the top and widens into a solid black panel with open spiral and scroll motifs. The sepia-toned photo sits on a beach with kites overhead, and the composition centres the tattoo against the broad shoulders.

Blackwork Back Tribal Spiral Spine Back piece Scroll

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 ray came in on the big spring tide, when the sand flats shone and nobody on Carrow Point was looking seaward. Tamsin Vole had strung her last kite that morning from a frame of ash and sailcloth, and the wind took it past the breakers before she could let go of the cord. She watched it dwindle to a grey comma above the water, then saw the cord go slack and drift down onto the sea.

Keep reading

Her uncle Pell said the sea keeps what it is given, and that was the end of his advice. But that evening a shape rose under the shallows off the point, broad and dark as a shut umbrella, its wings folding and unfolding slowly. Along its back ran a line like a spine, and on the black fan of its body pale whorls turned like the ends of old rope, scroll after scroll, each one open at the centre. Her kite's cord hung from the spine in a loop, the way a ribbon hangs from a hat.

She waded out to the knee. The ray lifted one wing and laid the kite across the sand at her feet, folded neat as a letter, the spirals on its back rippling in the last light. Tamsin asked what it wanted. It only turned, slow as a clock, and sank, and where it had been the water ran in rings that went out and out until they touched the far marker buoys.

Next morning she flew the kite again and it rose higher than ever. Every gust that carried it seaward left a faint whorl pressed into the cloth, the same as the ones on the ray. Pell never could say whether it had been a gift or a fee. Tamsin only knew that when she let the string run, something beneath the waves kept pace with it, and the cord hummed.