Realism tattoo of a grinning clown in a red, white and blue striped top hat and red bow tie, sitting on a calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Clown portrait with top hat on a calf

Realism · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A large portrait of a bearded clown with an open-mouthed grin, gold-toned teeth, and blue and white face paint with red cheek marks. He wears a striped top hat with stars and a red bow tie. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft grey tones across the face and colour used for the hat, face paint and bow tie.

Realism Calf Clown Portrait Top hat Bow tie Face paint Moustache Beard

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the clown at twenty past three, sitting on the edge of the linen trolley in the sluice corridor of Ward 7 as if he has been booked for the night. The stripes on his top hat are the red of a post box, and the gold in his grin catches the strip light each time he laughs, quietly and to himself, the way a man laughs at a joke he has heard too often. Nobody on the rota has signed him in. Nobody has signed anyone in since the agency nurse went home at ten.

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You tell him visiting ended hours ago. He tips the hat with one finger on the brim and says the ward has been expecting him since the Tuesday fire drill. You check the board. Bed 4 is Mr Ashdown, eighty-one, who has asked every shift for a man in a red bow tie to sit with him, and you had put it down to the morphine.

You walk him down. Ashdown is awake, eyes wide, and when he sees the bow tie he begins to cry the way children do, all at once and without apology. The clown pulls a handkerchief from nowhere, takes the plastic chair, and deals three hands of patience from a pack that was not in his pockets a moment ago. By the time he has finished his first sentence, Ashdown is laughing too.

By the time the sky greys over the car park, you have forgotten the sluice corridor and the cold coffee in your hand. When the day sister arrives she finds two men asleep over the cards and an empty chair with a dented top hat on the seat, still faintly warm. Tucked under the brim is a card in looping capitals: SAME TIME THURSDAY. KEEP THE LIGHTS LOW.