Realistic colour tattoo of a zipper opening the skin on a person's upper back and neck to reveal the spine and metal spinal hardware.

Zipper opening to reveal spine on back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A zipper runs down the centre of the upper back, parting illustrated skin to show red muscle tissue, vertebrae and grey metal rods and clamps fixed along the spine. The shading is smooth and highly detailed, with soft dark shadows around the opening and bright highlights on the metal teeth of the zip. The design fills the back from the nape of the neck to the mid back, with the zip pull at the bottom centre.

Realism Back Neck Spine Skin Metal

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

"Mind the teeth, Nell, they bite if you pull them crooked." Old Harrow said it without lifting his eyes from the bench, as though the zip had been waiting all morning to be told. Beneath the lamp lay Tobias Quill's back, or the trade's idea of a back, laid open from nape to waist like a coat unbuttoned in a hurry. Red muscle folded away on either side. Iron rods ran along the bones, and every joint wore a brass clamp.

Keep reading

Tobias had come off the tithe barn roof in March with his spine cracked like a dropped plate. The parish doctor shrugged, the priest prayed, and Harrow, who mended clocks and church bells and once a bellows-maker's music box, said he could hold the thing together if Tobias didn't mind being a little less soft. So the iron went on, one rod at a time, bolted to bone that Nell had to wipe clean of rust each morning with vinegar and a rag.

On the last Saturday Tobias sat up on the bench, grey as ash, and asked when the zip would close. "When you stand up straight without my hands on you," said Harrow. "Not before." Tobias laughed, then didn't, then stood. He stood for a long time, shaking, until his shoulders came level with the lamp and the ribs gave a small click like a latch.

Nell drew the pull up the teeth one by one, and the red skin came together over the iron as if it had never been apart. Tobias walked out into the lane with his collar up. Behind him the zip pull swung on its tape, cold and bright, waiting for the next man who had forgotten how to stand.