Colour tattoo of a boy and a striped tiger on a branch in soft watercolour washes, placed across a man's upper back and shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Boy and tiger on a branch across a shoulder blade

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A boy and a striped tiger sit on a branch against a loose wash of orange, pink and blue. The linework is soft and the shading blends into the background washes rather than using hard outlines. The design spreads across the upper back and shoulder blade, with the tree trunk falling down toward the shoulder.

Back Shoulder Tiger Branch Tree Cartoon character

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Hollins had called up the garden twice already, and twice Tobias Greer had shouted back that he was busy with the tiger. Which was true. Bramble lay along the sycamore branch with his chin on the bark and his tail hanging over the fence like a dropped scarf, and he had not said a word since breakfast. Tobias had learnt that this meant he was listening to the weather.

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The sky over the allotments had gone the colour of marmalade, the sort Mrs Hollins kept for Christmas. Tobias pulled his knees up and watched the pink smear spread along the rooftops. Bramble's whiskers twitched. "Rain by teatime," the tiger said, "and a cold one by the look of those clouds." Tobias had never once known him wrong about the weather, which was the main reason he kept him.

Down the road a van door slammed. Somebody was moving house, and a pale boy in a red jumper stood at the gate of the empty place opposite, staring up into the sycamore as if he could see the tiger too. Tobias raised a hand. After a long moment the boy raised his.

"He can see you," Tobias said. "Only because he's been waiting for someone to come up," said Bramble, and he stretched until the branch sighed. Mrs Hollins called again, crosser this time. Tobias climbed down slowly with the tiger's tail wrapped round his wrist, and the last of the light went out over the fences in long orange bands, the whole street wet with it.