Black tribal tattoo with a sun motif and swirling bands across the shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal sun tattoo on upper arm

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large black tribal design wraps over the shoulder and down the upper arm. A stylised sun with radiating rays sits inside a pale circular area, framed by thick curling bands of solid black ink. The composition follows the curve of the arm, and the dense black shapes contrast strongly with the lighter skin.

Shoulder Upper arm Sun Tribal pattern Swirl Ray

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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 week of August the sun on the back parlour ceiling has faded to the colour of weak tea, and Mrs Pascoe tells you it is your job to put it right before the Hendersons come down for breakfast. She hands you a tin of black distemper and a brush worn down to a stub, and says the pattern is older than the house. Nobody remembers who first painted it, only that it was meant to keep the damp out and the lodgers in good humour.

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You climb the ladder with the window propped open and the gulls shouting over the harbour wall. The rays are easy. The swirls are harder, because they never quite close: every curl runs out into another, thick at the shoulder and tapering to a point, as though someone had decided a sun ought to be bound in ribbon. You work from the centre outward, the way the old pattern wants, and by eight the pale disc sits inside its black frame like an open eye.

On the last ring you notice a small circle scratched into the plaster beneath the paint, and beside it a row of tiny marks, each one made with a nail. When you show Mrs Pascoe, she only laughs and takes a ledger down from the hook by the stairs. Every guest who slept under that sun has signed it, and the first entry is a fisherman's name with a drawing of the same circle beside it.

She hands you the pen. You sign your name beneath the last one, then add a single ray to the little drawing, and the ink is still wet when the Hendersons ring the bell.