Black tribal-style sea turtle tattoo with a pink plumeria flower at its centre, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal sea turtle on upper back

Blackwork · Back · Mixed · Photo

A bold black tribal sea turtle fills most of the frame, with its shell patterned in swirling solid black shapes and open negative space. A single pink plumeria flower sits at the centre of the shell, the only colour in the design. The tattoo is photographed straight on against smooth skin, with the shoulder blade visible at the edge of the frame.

Blackwork Back Turtle Sea turtle Plumeria Flower

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 turtle came up the shingle at Kahana Point just after the tide turned, and Mele was the only one awake to see it. She was sitting on the sea wall with a flask of tea gone cold, counting the way her father had taught her, out of habit. Four flippers, all there. Her father said the old ones had shells worn smooth as river stones, and this one looked like it had been polished by a hundred years of weather.

Keep reading

She had been sent down to mark the nesting boxes before the surveyors came from the city. Her brother Sione swore turtles could not find their way at night, only follow light, and that the lamps along the new hotel road had ruined the whole coast. Mele had a plumeria tucked behind one ear, picked from the tree outside the church. It slipped out while she climbed down, and the flower landed on the sand right in front of the turtle's path. The creature stopped, the way they stop at anything bright, and sniffed at it with its beaked face.

She did not move. The sky went grey, then the colour of guava flesh, and the wind came off the reef carrying salt and the smell of frying bread from the houses behind. When the turtle finally shuffled on, it carried the petal on the rim of its shell, pink against the black ridges, and it walked straight past the first nesting box and into the surf.

Eleven years later Mele came back to the point with her own daughter and a bag of mangoes. The same old turtle hauled itself out below the wall, slow and certain. Her daughter pointed and said there was a pink fleck stuck to its back. Mele told her it was only a bit of coral, and let her believe it.