Traditional tattoo of a UFO beaming down over a house with the words I want to believe on a banner, with teal flowers, on the upper arm.

UFO and house in a banner roundel

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A circular design shows a flying saucer with a teal beam over a two-storey house, set against mountains, a crescent moon and a stippled night sky. Bold black outlines and dotwork stippling form the sky, while the house and mountains use grey shading, and teal fills the beam and two flowers. The phrase I want to believe runs across a curved banner along the lower edge, framing the scene.

Traditional Dotwork Upper arm Ufo Crescent moon Star Mountain House Banner Lettering 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

You have stopped pretending it is the lighthouse. Three nights running the teal shaft comes down over the water beyond the breakwater, thin as a fishing line, and the saucer hangs above it with its rim lit like a dropped coin. Your dad's old Ford sits on the sea wall with its engine ticking, and you perch on the bonnet with a flask of Bovril going cold between your knees.

Keep reading

Mrs Ivy Tremayne from the chandlery says it's the Ministry, and Pete on the lifeboat swears it's the gas platform leaking light again. But you know what you saw on Tuesday: a figure standing inside the beam with one hand raised, calm as a man waiting for a bus. Nobody else looked up. The gulls didn't look up either.

On Thursday you bring the binoculars and a second cup, because if someone is coming down that light, they ought to find tea waiting. The saucer tilts. The beam narrows to a point over the old Penhallow house on the hill, the one with the sagging porch and the curtains drawn since the war, and for the first time its upstairs window is lit.

You stay until the grey comes up over the moor. The light goes out at four. At first light a lamp is still burning in that attic, and when it flicks twice, the way one boat signals to another, you find yourself, absurdly, flashing the Ford's headlights back.