Cheshire Cat grin tattoo with curling script lettering on an upper arm and shoulder, finished with blue and green watercolour splashes.

Cheshire Cat grin on an upper arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A grinning Cheshire Cat face sits on the upper arm, with its striped tail curling down towards the elbow and black script lettering wrapping around the cat. The linework is bold and dark, with soft blue and green watercolour-style washes spreading across the skin around the design. The colour is mixed, with the greens and blues contrasting against the black ink and the plain white top behind the arm.

Upper arm Shoulder Cheshire cat Cat Grin Script lettering Text

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

You missed the last bus out of Digbeth and walk instead, past shuttered print shops and a launderette where the dryers turn without anyone watching them. The rain has stopped but the pavements still hold it, so every streetlamp hangs twice, once above and once below, like a joke nobody has finished telling. Somewhere behind you a shutter rattles up and a voice calls out that the late bar is open, and you keep walking because you are already late for something you cannot name.

Keep reading

At the canal bridge a cat sits on the railing with its striped tail wrapped round the lamppost. It is blue-grey in the sodium light, or green, or the colour of a bruise on its way out, and it is grinning. Not at you exactly. At the water, the narrowboats, the dim cluster of office towers that look as if they are waiting to be asked a question. You say good evening. It says nothing, but the grin widens by a fraction, the way a shop sign does when someone finally reads it.

You ask it the way out. It tells you, with a flick of its tail, that most people in this city are mad, and that you will be too by Sunday if you stay, but the directions are good. Follow the water, it says, until the water stops making sense. Then turn left where the bricks start talking. You laugh, and when you look up again the railing is bare and the lamp is humming to itself.

You follow the canal until the water goes still and black. At the corner, on a wall of faded paint, there is a single line of script: you are here. Beneath it, in newer ink, someone has added: we are all here.