Collage of colourful geometric tattoos of animals, flowers and boats, shown on arms and legs in faceted blue, purple and red ink.

Collage of geometric animal and botanical tattoos

Geometric · Other · Colour · Photo

This collage shows many photographs of tattoos on skin, mostly of animals such as lions, foxes, cats, whales, birds and deer, plus flowers, a boat and a ship. The designs use bold, faceted shapes with smooth gradients and clean outlines. Blue, purple, pink, red and yellow ink dominates throughout, with some areas of grey shading.

Geometric Botanical Other Lion Turtle Pansy Deer Boat Fox Elephant Poppy Goldfish Bird Rabbit Owl Cat Whale Fish Wolf Ship

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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 Tennant wanted the whale finished before the Whitsun dance, and nobody else in Bexmouth would take the job for twelve pounds and a bed above the boatshed. So I stood on a trestle in the Pavilion with a tin of violet and a tin of ultramarine, blocking the animal in the way my father taught me, one flat facet at a time, so the light from the chandeliers would break across it like water.

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The band below played Ambrose tunes slow enough to hear the sea through the open doors. Dolores from the cloakroom brought me tea in a chipped cup and told me the whale looked lonely. I said whales were always lonely, that was the point of them. She laughed and said I sounded like my father, then stood under the scaffold for a whole number, watching the tail take shape above the sprung floor.

By the last waltz the whale ran the length of the back wall, dark blue at its belly, the spout a sheet of silver leaf I had cut with my mother's sewing shears. Mr Tennant came up the steps wiping his hands and asked where I had put the people. I hadn't put any. I pointed at the glass in the lamp, where the couples under the chandelier were turning slowly through the light, faceted and bright and never quite the same colour twice.

He paid me in cash that night and Dolores kept the cup. The Pavilion closed for good in August, but the whale is still up there, and when the sun drops low through the west windows it swims straight across the floor, and the dancers step over it without looking down.