Full arm sleeve tattoo in colour with roses, a sugar skull, diamonds and leopard print across the upper arm and forearm, shown in three views.

Colour arm sleeve with roses and sugar skull

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A full arm sleeve shown in three photographs, with red roses, a bow, a sugar skull, green and blue diamonds, and a padlock set among black leopard print spots. The linework is bold and outlined, with solid fills and simple shading, and red script lettering runs down the inner forearm. Colour ink dominates, and the arm is framed against a pale top on a tiled floor.

Traditional Upper arm Forearm Leopard print Rose Sugar skull Bow Diamond Padlock Script Sleeve

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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

The padlock on the feed shed has frozen shut again, so you stand with the kettle in both hands and pour warm water along the hasp while Dad shouts from the yard that the ewes are bawling for their breakfast. The key has lived in your coat pocket since October and is warm from your hip, but the iron won't give until you've steamed the ice out of it and worked the shackle with your thumb.

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Overnight the snow came down and laid a coat of dark spots across the yard, the shadows of the bare hawthorn breaking the white into something spotted and wild. Along the top wire of the fence every strand has grown a row of frost that catches the sun like cut stones. Gran's rosebush by the porch is black sticks now, but the red ribbon she knotted on the gate for the lambing show is still there, faded to the colour of rhubarb, and it lifts whenever the wind comes up the lane.

Inside, the feed bin lid still carries the sugar skull she painted the winter before she went into hospital, grinning under a coat of varnish, and beneath it in red script the words Keep Us Fed. You scoop the last grey pellets into the bucket. There is barely enough for one more morning, and the auction van is booked for Thursday, so the ewes are leaving whether the snow stays or not.

Dad comes up behind you, breath smoking, and asks whether the shed is open. You tell him it is. He doesn't ask about the bin. You take the padlock off the hasp, the cold biting through your gloves, and hang it on the gate beside the ribbon, open, so nobody has to fight the ice again.