Black and grey realistic fish scale tattoo with small bubble details on the hip, shown in a close-up photo.

Fish scale pattern on a hip

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A cluster of overlapping fish scales with small round bubble shapes sits on the side of the hip. The scales are shaded in soft greys with darker edges and lighter highlights, giving them a rounded, three-dimensional look. The background is softly blurred, and the photo is taken at a close angle with a white waistband visible below the tattoo.

Realism Other Fish scale Scale Bubble

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

The pond behind Hollin Farm froze so hard that winter the carp sank into the mud and stayed there. Old Tamsin Reeve broke the ice each morning with the back of an axe so the cattle could drink, and each morning she watched the gap she'd made, because her father had told her that a bubble means something under the ice is still breathing.

Keep reading

One morning there were nine bubbles where there had been none the day before. She knelt on the rime with her sleeves rolled and saw, through the black water, a flash of grey scale no bigger than a thumbnail. Something had come up from under the frost to breathe. She fetched the bucket, the rope and the boy from the next farm, Owen Pryce, who was too young to be afraid of cold water.

They hauled up a carp as long as a forearm, its scales dull as pewter and each one ringed with a darker edge, like the shingles on a barn roof. It was thin and furious. Owen wanted to keep it in the milk churn by the range. Tamsin said no. She had heard the old story from her grandmother, that a fish which wakes in winter has bargained with the pond, and the pond will want paying.

They carried it back and slid it through the gap. It hung a moment, then the bubbles came up in a little silver string, one, two, three, until the surface closed over it. Owen asked what the pond had been paid. Tamsin looked at the cattle, at the frozen gate, at her own grey cuffs. 'Only the waiting,' she said, and went to break the ice again.