Colour neo-traditional tattoo of an anthropomorphic catfish wearing a blue waistcoat and red bow tie, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Catfish in a waistcoat and bow tie

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A green and olive catfish with whiskers and a dark blue waistcoat with gold buttons, wearing a red bow tie, is shown standing upright in human dress. The outlines are bold and the shading is smooth, with highlights on the fish's eye and scales. The colour palette is rich, mixing greens, blues, tans and red against a plain pale skin and blue backdrop.

Neo-trad Forearm Fish Bow tie Whiskers Suit

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

Mr Albert Sorrel had worn the same waistcoat to every Sunday supper since the summer the rector's wife dropped her wedding ring into the pond. It was bottle-blue, with four gold buttons, and he brushed it with the flat of a lily leaf before he rose from the silt each week. The red bow tie was newer. Mrs Pim from the cottage across the lane had tied it for him on a bet, and he had never once untied it.

Keep reading

The garden at Hollin Lodge was not built for fish in clothes. Its paths ran to a sundial, a row of runner beans and a greenhouse that smelled of tomato leaves, and the pond sat at the bottom of it all like a forgotten plate. The gardener, young Tom Ashdown, had stopped asking why the catfish came up to the surface whenever the church bell rang eleven. Some things in a garden keep their own timetable.

On the Sunday the ring was found, Mr Sorrel came up through the duckweed with his whiskers combed flat and sat on the stone edge without a word. Tom knelt beside him and held out the little gold band, dull with mud. The fish took it in his mouth, turned it over with his barbels, and gave it back with the air of a man settling a bill.

'Keep it,' Tom said. 'It was never mine.'

Mr Sorrel dipped his head once, slid back into the green water, and in the morning the bow tie was hanging from the sundial, perfectly straight.