Black ink illustration of a cartoon figure in a long coat and dark bobbed hair on the upper arm, with a grey sleeve at the top of the frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cartoon figure in a coat on an upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black line drawing shows a stylised figure with dark hair, a long coat and a short dress or skirt, with arms and legs spread in a stiff, playful pose. The linework is bold and simple, with flat black fills for the hair and clothing and no visible shading. The ink is black on pale skin, and the figure runs diagonally across the upper arm against a plain, out-of-focus background.

Upper arm Figure Cartoon character Dress Hair

Find an artist for this

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

Nobody in Tolley Street had seen Maud Ferris run for a bus until the morning her coat got there first. It was the grey wool one she had cut from a dead man's overcoat, too long in the sleeve and far too long in the hem, and it had been hanging on the back of the shop door since the spring. When she came down the stairs at seven with her toast in one hand, the coat was already out on the pavement, arms flung wide and one leg kicked up as if mid-cancan, waiting by the kerb like a commuter who had given up on her.

Keep reading

"You're late," said the coat, in the flat tone of a man reading the shipping forecast.

Maud had made the coat. She had not made it talk. She dropped the toast into the gutter, which felt wrong, and walked to the stop with her hands in her pockets while the coat strode ahead of her, skirting puddles with a stiff, delighted lope, its short dress swinging like a bell. The bus came. The coat got on first and paid for them both with a button. The driver said nothing, because by then nothing about the seafront route surprised him. Maud sat at the back and watched her own sleeves wave at her through the window, and by the time they reached the front she had decided, with the calm of a woman who had been up since five, that the sensible thing was to let it lead.

At the end of the pier the coat stopped, spun once with its arms out, and waited. Maud took her hands out of her pockets. It was the first thing she had done in a year that the coat had not done first, and the gulls went quiet to watch the two of them fall about laughing.