Traditional style tattoo on a calf showing a red eye in a cloud frame above a shaded umbrella with raindrops and a red flower below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Eye, umbrella and rain on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Mixed · Photo

The design shows an eye with a red iris set within a cloud-edged frame, with black raindrops falling above a grey-shaded umbrella and a red flower with dark leaves at the base. The outlines are bold and the umbrella is shaded in greys with dotted detail, while the eye, flower and green umbrella panel use solid red and green colour. The tattoo is centred on the leg against a dark red backdrop, with a denim hem visible at the top left.

Traditional Calf Eye Umbrella Raindrop Cloud Flower Leaves

Find an artist for this

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 Ambrose Tull sold umbrellas from a cart outside the Pier Gates at Whitby, and in forty years he never once opened one for himself. He said it was bad luck to shelter under your own stock. I took it for vanity, the way he kept his good grey coat dry and let his hat take the drips.

Keep reading

The summer I mended his frames, he showed me the eye. It was painted on the underside of the cart's canopy, a red-irised thing above the cloud-lace trim, and when the sky looked doubtful he'd glance up at it the way other men check a barometer. 'Never lies,' he said. 'Only tells you what it's already decided.' I laughed. The rain had been sheeting off the harbour for three weeks.

The morning he died the sky was clear as glass, gulls on the wall and bunting snapping over the slipway. I went to the cart for his ledger and found the canopy furled and the painted eye turned to the planks. Under the bench lay one black umbrella, dry, its ribs freshly lacquered, and tucked into the strap a red bloom like the buttonholes he sold for a penny.

I unfurled it in the sunshine, just to see. Nothing fell. Then, out over the water, a single grey drop struck the canvas, then another, and I stood beneath them with half the town staring up at a sky that had not yet made up its mind. I kept the cart. I still don't open the thing indoors.