Black and grey penguin tattoo of four penguins standing in a row on a forearm, with small orange beaks and feet and partly visible script beneath.

Four penguins in a row on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Four penguins stand side by side in a row, each shown at a slightly different angle, with the leftmost turned away and the rightmost seen from behind. The birds are drawn with bold black outlines and soft grey shading on their bellies and wings, with small orange beaks and feet as the only colour. Partial cursive script runs along the lower edge of the forearm, and the skin background is plain and softly lit.

Forearm Penguin Script

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

Nobody tells you the penguins keep a timetable until you have spent a winter counting them. By seven each morning the four of them were already at the top of the scree above Gannet Cove, shuffling into their line like commuters who had lost the knack of being early. Harriet at the station had named them after shipping forecast areas, which nobody on the island could explain, so the leftmost was Viking, the one with the bent foot was Thames, and the two in the middle were Dogger and Fisher, because by then we had run out of ideas.

Keep reading

The rule was that the four went down to the water together or not at all. Fisher never went. He stood at the back with his tail to the sea, watching my hut as though a letter were due. In May the supply boat failed to come and the radio gave nothing but static for nine days. I started leaving a mug of tea on the step and talking to him over it, telling him the boat would come when the weather let it, and that a woman in Dundee had promised to write once a month.

On the tenth morning there was a bottle in the shingle, its neck sealed with red wax. The note inside was in pencil and said only: Keep the light on. Someone will guide you in. I looked up. Fisher had come down the rocks and was facing me for once, head tilted the way a bird tilts when it has decided you are worth a second look. The other three were already in the surf without him.

I kept the lamp burning every night after that, and on the thirteenth day the boat came round the headland with its horn going. When I walked down to meet it, the four of them were bobbing in the cove, and Fisher was the only one still looking back at the hut.