Pencil sketch of a Japanese-style dragon surrounded by cherry blossoms, drawn as a tattoo design on paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dragon and cherry blossom design sketch

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a horned dragon with an open mouth, fanged jaw and scaled body, set among five-petalled cherry blossom flowers and small wisps of cloud. The linework is sketched with soft grey shading on the scales, face and blossoms, with the paper left light around the edges. The design is shown on a plain sheet with a page number at the bottom, suggesting a flash or reference sheet.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hana,

Keep reading

You will not believe the state of the marquee. The florist has put cherry blossom on every table, real branches she brought down from the hills in the back of a borrowed van, and half of them are already shedding onto the cloths. Uncle Teruo says it is bad luck to sweep petals before the speeches, so Mrs Okada has been following the waiters with a dustpan and a face like thunder.

The dragon came up from the lake this morning. Nobody agreed to it, but Kenji carried the old lacquer screen out of the storehouse himself, and when the bride saw the sketch it had been copied from she laughed and said it looked hungry. It does. Its jaws are open as if it means to swallow the whole wedding party, and the blossoms around it are drawn so fine you can count the petals. Kenji says his grandfather drew the original on the back of a delivery docket, and that the creature was never meant to be fierce, only to guard the door against anything that came in without an invitation.

I keep thinking about that. We have spent three weeks arguing about seating plans and whether the rain will hold off, and all along the thing watching the door was a sketch folded in a drawer since before either of them was born.

Come on Saturday. Bring your good shoes, the ground is soft, and do not let Dad near the sake.

Love, Mari

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