Realistic colour tattoo of a grey Buddha head with raised hand and a pink lotus flower, set against an orange and green clouded background on the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Buddha and lotus on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A realistic tattoo of a Buddha head with a raised open hand, shown in soft grey shading with a small dot on the forehead. A large pink lotus flower sits in the lower foreground, and the background is a blended wash of orange, green and blue that fills the space behind the head. The design wraps over the upper arm and shoulder, with smooth gradients and fine detail in the face and petals.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Buddha Lotus Hand Flower Cloud

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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

You take the Buddha on at Brentford because the man who sold him wanted him gone by Friday and nobody else would carry him. He is heavier than he looks, a grey stone head the size of a cabbage, eyes half closed, one hand lifted beside his cheek with the palm turned out, as if to stop traffic. You wrap him in a moving blanket and wedge him between the coal sacks and the tiller, where the diesel can't get at him.

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Through the locks at Hanwell you talk to him, which is not something you would admit in the pub. The lock keepers wave. A woman on the towpath with a pram asks whether he's for sale, and you say he isn't, then wonder why you said it so fast. Somewhere past Cowley the wind drops and the canal goes flat as poured tin, and you start to think he has the right idea about patience.

By the time you reach the Limehouse basin the sky has caught fire over the gasworks, orange bleeding into green and then a thin clean blue at the top. The buyer's van is nowhere. You lift the blanket off him and set him upright on a sack, and the water below, catching the colours, looks like a pond with a pink flower floating in it that isn't there.

The lad from the boatyard has been watching from the bollards. You raise your own hand, palm out, the way the stone one is raised. He copies you, not understanding, and the two of you stand on the wharf with your hands up at the sunset while the last barge of the evening noses slowly into the lock.