Watercolour-style tattoo of a black koi and a red fish on the upper back, between the shoulder blades and the neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and red koi fish on upper back

Back · Mixed · Photo

Two fish swim in opposite directions across the upper back of a person with short dark hair, photographed from behind. The black fish on the left has soft grey shading and fins that fade into the skin, while the red fish on the right has flowing fins and a tapered tail. The loose, blended edges and wash-like colour give the piece a painted, watercolour look, set against a plain skin background.

Back Koi Fish Goldfish

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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 bag swings from your wrist as the waltzer winds down behind the hook-a-duck stall, and the water inside slops against the plastic in time with the carousel organ. Declan, who runs the goldfish stall with a tin cash box and a cough like a rusted gate, tells you the red one is the lucky one. The black fish, he says, has been in the tank since Easter and nobody has ever won it. Fish nobody wins get to choose their own owner after closing, that's the rule of the fair, and he won't say what happens if they choose no one.

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You win the red one on the third throw, a ring looping cleanly over the neck of a green bottle, and Declan hands it over without looking up from his ledger. It lies listless in the bag all the way back to the caravans, its tail barely moving. By the time the lights on the wheel go out one by one, you have walked back across the wet field with the bag held in both hands, and the gate to the tank is open because nobody thought to lock it.

You tip the red fish in beside the black one. For a while they only drift, then the red fish flicks its fins and turns, and the black fish turns too, the two of them circling the glass in opposite directions, never once meeting in the middle. In the morning the flatbeds are already rolling, the tank wrapped in a towel and strapped in the back of Declan's van. Through the gap in the towel you see one black scale stuck to the glass, and the red fish turning the other way round, as if it has been waiting for you to notice.