Flash sheet of twelve black zodiac sign designs in a classic style above twelve modern tribal zodiac designs, with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Zodiac sign designs in classic and modern tribal styles

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

The sheet shows two rows of six classic zodiac designs above two rows of six modern tribal zodiac designs, each on a white background. The classic designs use bold black silhouettes with the sign's glyph printed beneath, while the tribal designs use dense, ornate black linework and filled shapes. The image is entirely black and white, with each design shown separately in its own panel.

Traditional Blackwork Zodiac Tribal Ram Bull Crab Lion Scale Scorpion

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Hepworth had pinned the sheets to the kitchen dresser with four drawing pins and a cup of cold tea on the corner, so that nobody could say afterwards they hadn't seen them. Twelve signs in the classic hand, twelve in the heavier tribal, the ram at the top with its curled horns like a pair of brackets. Ruth had been at the table since breakfast with a pencil behind each ear, trying to decide which set the hall floor should follow.

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"The crab," said Mr Ogle from the doorway, reading upside down. "Crab's the one for a boarding house. Sideways in, sideways out."

Ruth didn't laugh. She had lodged here two winters now, long enough to know the house ran on small arrangements: the gas meter read on the first Monday, the lion tiles by the back stairs cracked in the same place every spring. The tribal crab had its claws full of spirals, and she had spent an hour tracing them with one finger on the glass until the shapes stopped meaning anything at all.

On the last morning of the month she laid the classic set on the hall floor, tile by tile, from the front door to the stairs. Scales on the mat, ram by the umbrella stand, the scorpion where the draught came under. Mrs Hepworth stood at the top of the stairs with her hands folded and counted under her breath.

"Twelve," she said. "And the fish last, by the cellar. It always was going to be the fish."