Black tribal sun design with rays and three spiral roses at the centre, shown as a flash drawing with no body placement.

Tribal sun with three roses

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A solid black tribal sun with curled, wave-like rays radiating from a ring. Three spiral rose shapes sit together in the centre of the circle. The design uses bold black fills with white negative-space swirls and no shading, on a plain white background.

Blackwork Sun Rose Spiral 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

Dear Tomas, the rain has not let up since Tuesday and the Kirkgate stalls are sagging under their tarpaulins like wet sails. I have spent the morning under the awning with the bread trolley, pressing the stamp into every loaf before Mrs Okafor's boy comes round with the van. You would laugh at me. Thirty loaves a day and I still check the sun is the right way up.

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The stamp is the one our mother cut from a length of pear wood the winter before she left. Eight rays, each one curling at the tip like a wave that thought better of breaking, and in the middle the three roses, one above two, spiralling inward until you could lose a thumbnail in them. Mr Dobson at the next stall says it looks like a bruise that has learnt manners. I told him it looks like the sun on a bad day, trying hard.

Yesterday a woman with a wet pushchair stopped and asked whether the loaves were blessed. I said only by the rain. She bought two anyway and asked me to keep the mark on the crust so she could tell them apart from the supermarket ones. I did not have the heart to tell her the roses were only there because our mother could never carve a plain circle.

I am sending the stamp with this letter, wrapped in oilcloth, so you can press it into something warm in Lisbon and remember the rain is not everything. Write back before the market closes for the winter. Your brother, Daniel.