Black tribal-style sea turtle tattoo with spiral patterns in its shell, placed on the ankle.

Tribal sea turtle on an ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black sea turtle with a teardrop-shaped shell filled with bold tribal swirls and spirals, and curled flippers and head. The linework is thick and the black ink is fully saturated, with no shading or greys. The tattoo is centred on the ankle against freckled skin, with a dark background at the edges of the frame.

Ankle Turtle Sea turtle Spiral Swirl Tribal

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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

By the third lock the paint on the roof of the Marigold had started to blister, and you were the only one aboard who wasn't looking at the water. Your mother steered from the back with one hand on the tiller and the other around a tin of cold tea. Ahead, the lock gates groaned shut, and the water beneath the hull began to turn, slow and wide, the way it always did before the paddles lifted.

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Something flat and dark rode the eddy beside the bow. It was a turtle the size of a serving tray, its shell shaped like a dropped pear and marked with swirls that looked as if someone had traced the river's own ripples with a thick black pen. Its head came up, its clawed flippers beat once, twice, and it slid under the gate where no turtle had any business being. You said nothing. Your mother said nothing either, which told you she had seen it too.

Nobody in Stoke Hythe believed you. Not the lock keeper, not the landlord of the Swan, not the man who sold eels off the back of a van. Only old Mrs Pryce at the top lock nodded and said her grandfather had kept one in a washtub for a whole winter, and that they always went back to the warm end of the cut when the water changed.

In August the flood went down and the canal ran clear to the bottom. On the towpath, where the mud had dried to a grey crust, you found a long curved track, and beside it a spiral pressed deep, stopping exactly where the water began.