Colour tattoo of a unicorn head with a purple and pink mane, in soft gradient shading, on a woman's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Unicorn head tattoo on upper back

Back · Colour · Photo

A unicorn head in profile with a pink face, a purple and blue flowing mane, and a single horn, with small sparkle marks near the tip of the horn. The shading is soft and gradual, blending pink, violet and blue across the head and mane. It sits on bare skin on the upper back, framed by a white crochet lace top and long blonde hair.

Back Unicorn Horse Mane Horn Sparkle

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 are sent across to Inish Varra on the Thursday boat with a tin of paint you are not to open until the hull is dry. Mr Dunleavy builds the island's crabbers, and he wants the gunwale of his new boat finished before the regatta. Nobody on the island will tell you why every old boat there carries a horse's head on its bow, only that yours must have one too.

Keep reading

Halfway through the mane the blue runs out. You scrape the tin, then raid the jam jar on the windowsill for bilberry juice, rub a pinch of crushed scallop shell into the pink, and cut the lamp oil with a little grey to stretch the colour. The shades bleed into one another the way the evening does over the water. By dusk the head looks less like a horse than something that has just climbed out of the surf and is deciding whether to stay.

Dunleavy's granddaughter, Orla, comes down to the slip with a lantern and asks you to add a horn. Her mother once told her the first boat built on the island had one, and it brought every crew home. You tell her a crabber does not need a horn. She laughs and points at the spray dripping from the bow, which catches the lamplight in small bright flecks. You paint three marks beside the tip, telling yourself they are only for show.

The next morning the boat goes out into a grey swell. From the pier you watch it climb each wave, and each time the bow lifts, the sparks at the horn flash back the sun before the spray takes them.