Tribal turtle and three blue plumeria flowers tattooed on the top of a foot, with a black tribal band running up towards the ankle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal turtle and plumeria foot tattoo

Ankle · Mixed · Photo

A tribal-style turtle motif in black linework sits on the top of a foot, with three blue and white plumeria flowers around it. Solid black areas and fine swirling lines form the tribal patterning, with a zigzag edge along the top and a thin black band with symbols running up the ankle. The blue flowers are the only colour against the black ink, shown on a pink towel with silver toenail polish.

Ankle Other Turtle Plumeria Flower Tribal pattern Zigzag Band Foot

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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

Hold the torch steady, girl, and stop staring at the sea as if it owes you money. Your grandmother would have sent me to bed for letting the fire go out, so I will tell this while I coax it back to life.

Keep reading

The turtle came up the reef at Motu Ara every spring, when the plumeria trees above the cove dropped their flowers onto the sand, white and blue at the edges. My grandfather used to say she carried the tide on her back: the black whorls like wind on water, the zigzag where the reef breaks. He cut those same whorls into the lintel of our house, so every morning the sea was already written over our door.

One season the flowers came early and the turtle did not. For three weeks we kept watch from the rocks. Fishermen from Tanga Bay came round with their nets and asked whether the old carver had lost his wits, sitting on the stones with a bowl of flowers in his lap. I told them she would come when the water warmed enough, and that a creature who knows the way home has no need of a map.

She came on a night with no moon, her shell lit faintly by the water, three blossoms snagged in the weed on her back. I did not touch her. I set my bowl down on the sand and let her take what she wanted. She turned once, slow as a thought, and slid back beyond the break. At dawn the flowers she had left were still floating in the shallows, and I counted them, all three, before I came to wake you.