Black ink tattoo of a slender winged figure, possibly a fairy or dragonfly, with soft brushed linework on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged figure tattoo on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a small, stylised figure with two outstretched wings, drawn in loose black brushed strokes that taper and vary in weight. A long curved line trails down from the body, and the upper edge of a white top and a hand pulling its strap are visible at the bottom of the frame. The ink is solid black with no colour, and the design sits centrally on the upper back with the subject's hair falling at the right edge.

Back Fairy Dragonfly Wing

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

Mr Pryce never let anyone touch the sable brushes until they had painted a hundred strokes on newspaper, and even then he stood behind me at the bench with his arms folded. "Load it from the heel, Vera, not the tip. Then one breath, and lift before you mean to." The fair was due on the green at Hallam Cross in a fortnight, and the sign for the roundabout needed a fairy in a green dress on the left-hand panel, though nobody in the shop could draw a fairy to Mr Pryce's liking.

Keep reading

I drew one on the back of a rejected card that night, at the kitchen table, my father snoring through the wall. The body was a single dab, a comma with a head. The wings were harder. Each had to be one flick, quick and flat, so the edge thinned out like a blade. I got the first wing right by accident and the second wrong, so I laid it on again and again until the paper went soft. By the time I reached the tail I had stopped minding. One long curve, dragged down, lifting off at the end where the ink ran thin as breath.

Mr Pryce saw it on Monday and said nothing for so long I thought I had ruined a good card. Then he tapped it with one finger. "That's not a fairy," he said. "That's a dragonfly that's been to Blackpool and come back changed." He pinned it above the bench anyway.

The fete came and went, and the sign went up on the roundabout with my figure on it, bigger and bolder than anything drawn at a kitchen table. The card stayed above the bench until the damp got to it. I kept the tail, though, the bit where I lifted the brush a little late, because that was where the line had found its own way down.