Traditional style back tattoo of a winged angel holding a palm frond, with red sun rays, black fleur-de-lis crosses and green leaves.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged angel with palm on a back

Traditional · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large back piece shows a winged angel in a long robe, raising a green palm frond above her head, with her orange hair flowing around her wings. Bold black outlines and solid black shading define the wings, robe and crosses, while red clouds, red sun rays and green leaves add colour. The design is centred and symmetrical, with the wings spreading across the shoulders and a cross at the base of the composition.

Traditional Back Angel Wing Cross Fleur-de-lis Leaves Sun Cloud

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

The sun had cleared the harbour wall before Master Lysandros let me touch the chisel to the angel's hair. Hot marble burned through the cloth on my palm, and he swore at me in two languages for leaning on it. The widow from the salt quarter had paid in silver for a winged woman to stand over her husband's tomb, and she wanted the wings cut so deep the morning light would stripe them like oars.

Keep reading

Each day she came to watch, dressed in grey wool, and each day she asked the same thing: that the palm frond be made to look alive. Master Lysandros said stone was stone. I said nothing, but the week before I had ground malachite in the lamp room, mixed it with egg white and a little vinegar, and hidden the paste in a cracked oyster shell under my bench.

On the last day she brought a cup of wine and stood beneath the angel's raised arm. I painted the palm while she watched, long strokes down each leaf, then red ochre along the cloud behind the sun-rays Lysandros had scratched into the slab. The paint went dark while it was wet and bright as it dried. She pressed two fingers to the leaves and came away with a smear of green across her knuckle.

'He always said the sea would give him back to a palm,' she said. 'Not a bird. A palm.' Then she walked down to the harbour without waiting for the cart, and I stayed behind to scrape the ochre from my nails. The angel looked out over the tomb toward the water, one fist of green held high, as though she were the one who had come home.