Black and grey realism sleeve tattoo of a Buddha, lotus flowers and a tiger across the upper arm and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Buddha, lotus and tiger sleeve

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large sleeve tattoo shows a seated Buddha with a haloed backdrop on the upper arm, with lotus flowers and a tiger's head continuing down the forearm. The shading is smooth and detailed, with fine texture in the Buddha's robes, the lotus petals and the tiger's fur. The design is rendered almost entirely in greys and blacks with a warm skin tone around it, and it fills the frame from the shoulder down to the wrist.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Buddha Lotus Flower Tiger Halo Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lotus pond behind the temple on Pell Island had been drained twice in my lifetime, and both times my uncle Sunil swore the frogs would find their way back by the monsoon. They always did. Nothing else on the island was as dependable. The ferry came when the sea allowed, and the monks were down to three old men and a cat called Admiral.

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The Buddha sat at the top of the path, cut from grey stone that had come over on a barge in 1931. He kept his hands in his lap and his eyes half closed, looking out at the harbour as if he expected the boats to explain themselves. Every spring my job was to scrub the lichen from his shoulders with a bucket of vinegar and a stiff brush. Sunil said the old man liked the attention.

The tiger arrived on a timber lorry in 1978, a painted thing bought for a travelling show that never came. It was left in the scrub above the pond with half its stripes faded, and the children dared each other to touch its nose. When the storm took the shrine roof last autumn, we found the tiger's head had snapped off and rolled into the lotus leaves, where it lay like something sleeping. I carried it up the path on my back, and Sunil propped it against the Buddha's feet.

The ferry brought a stranger the following week, a man with a sketchbook and a tin of charcoal who wanted to draw us. He sat on the low wall for three afternoons, asking me to hold still while he looked at the statue, the flowers and the tiger all at once. When he finally showed me the page, the Buddha was looking straight at me, and I understood he had caught the one thing about the island that never changes.