Colour traditional tattoo on an upper arm showing a T-rex, a raptor and a sunburst beside roses, leaves and two banners with lettering.

Dinosaurs, roses and banners on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a green tyrannosaurus head with open jaws and teeth, a blue and purple raptor, and a yellow sunburst with a second dinosaur head, framed by pink roses and green leaves. Two banners carry lettering in black outline, with partly obscured wording that reads as a phrase about dinosaurs and the earth. Bold black outlines and flat, solid fills in blue, green, purple, yellow and pink give a bright, mostly flat colour finish.

Traditional Lettering Upper arm Dinosaur Rose Leaves Sunburst Banner Lettering

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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 ovens in Hobb's Lane were already breathing at half past four when you hauled the sack of flour through the back door and found Danny, the new lad, crying over a tray of croissants that had gone as flat as beer mats. The radio muttered the shipping forecast. Mrs Okonedo's egg van was late again, and the sky outside the window had not yet decided what colour it wanted to be.

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You told Danny that dough had no interest in how sorry anyone felt, and you showed him how to fold it again, slowly, the way your nan had taught you. Above the roller shutter someone had sprayed a lizard years ago, green with its jaws wide, and the council had never got round to painting over it. You were lifting the first seeded loaves onto the cooling rack when the lights dipped and the whole street went black for the length of a held breath.

In that dark you heard it, claws clicking across the tiles, slow and unhurried. Danny made a noise like a kettle. You didn't make a noise at all. You struck a match and lit the paraffin lamp you kept for power cuts, and there in the doorway stood a raptor the size of a Labrador, blue as a gas ring, purple at the throat, with a yellow frill that caught the flame like a sunrise. It sniffed the rack, then looked at you with the patience of something that had waited a long time for good bread.

You broke off the heel of a loaf and held it out. It took it delicately and swallowed. Danny whispered that dinosaurs ate men. 'Some of them,' you said, 'but the rest had to buy their bread somewhere.' By seven the raptor was gone, leaving three-toed prints in the flour and a single rose petal on the step. The next morning the order book had a new line in your handwriting: forty loaves, Hollins Estate, paid in full, no questions asked.