Full-colour tattoo of a whimsical castle on mechanical legs, with a green tree, red roofs and a large dome, across a person's upper back.

Walking castle tattoo across upper back

Back · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo of a whimsical castle built on mechanical legs covers most of the upper back, with a large dome shaped like a face at the top. Houses with red roofs, a chimney and a green tree sit on the structure, with a bird-like creature and a rust-coloured hull at the lower edge. Bold outlines and smooth colour shading in blue, orange, green and grey give the piece a bright, illustrative finish.

Back Castle Tree House Chimney Bird Flag

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

Mrs Ada Pell had signed for every late goods train on the Harrowmoor line for thirty-one years, and she had never once written a delay for a castle. So when the 6.12 came in twenty minutes early, its brakes screaming, and the signal box lamp flickered at the far end of the platform, she assumed it was the cold getting into the lamps again.

Keep reading

It was not the cold. Something was coming up the embankment on four long legs of riveted iron, each one lifting and setting down with the patience of a heron. A tower leaned over the top of it, its dome grey and round, with two round windows like startled eyes. Red roofs were stacked along its flanks, and a tree grew out of the middle as if someone had planted it in a crack in the stone. Smoke rose from a chimney at the back and was snatched away by the wind. A copper bird with blue-grey wings rode on a pole near the bottom, looking unimpressed.

Ada took her hi-vis from the hook, walked out onto the platform, and held up her lamp. The castle stopped above her. A flag cracked open at its highest point, striped red and cream, and a voice that sounded like a kettle thinking about singing said, "Is this Harrowmoor? Only the map says it's a station, and I can't read the sign without my glasses."

"It's a station," Ada said. "Ticket?"

The castle considered this. Then, with a grinding groan, it sank one leg to the platform edge and lowered a little wooden door. A boy of about nine climbed down holding a tin of boiled sweets, followed by a tall woman with a satchel full of tools. "We're passengers," the boy said. "Mostly."

Ada checked the timetable in her head. There was no train for this. There would be one now, she decided, and she wrote it on the back of her hand in biro: one castle, two passengers, due Thursday.