Collage of four small black ink tattoos: a sun and crescent moon on an ankle, a lotus on a toe, a rose behind an ear, and a panda on a wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four small black tattoos: sun, lotus, rose and panda

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

This collage shows four small tattoos in black ink on different parts of the body. The top left shows a sun with rays beside a crescent moon on the ankle, drawn in fine, even linework. The top right shows an outlined lotus on a toe, and the bottom left shows a rose with a stem and leaves behind the ear, both with fine lines and light shading. The bottom right shows a solid black panda on the inside of the wrist, with bold, simple shapes and no shading.

Fine line Botanical Ankle Forearm Other Sun Moon Lotus Rose Panda Stem Leaves

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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 wallpaper in room four came away in damp strips, and under it, low on the skirting where a child would kick it, someone had stencilled a panda. Black, fat-bellied, sitting with its paws crossed. Aunt Ruth stood with the scraper in her hand and said it was the sort of thing the last landlord's boy would have done, and I said nothing, because I had already found the sun.

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The sun was above the door of room two, its rays as fine as hair, and the moon was across the landing above the bath, a crescent with its horns turned toward the sea window. Mr Pell had painted them the summer before the war, when he lodged with us for eleven weeks and paid his rent in sign-writing for the Anchor. Aunt Ruth remembered him only as a man who never once went down to the water. There was a lotus on the back of the cellar door, and a rose climbing the stair rail, stalk and two leaves, drawn so carefully you could count the thorns.

I found his pattern book in the drawer of the hall table, under the tide tables. Each stencil was numbered, and inside the cover he had written in pencil, 'For the rooms nobody asks about. Keep them where the paint is thickest.' The last page was blank except for a panda with a ribbon round its neck and a single line struck through it, as if he had decided against it, or been asked to stop.

We kept the panda. Aunt Ruth painted the walls the colour of weak tea and left the skirting alone, and that night I went down with a damp cloth and rubbed the dust from its black paws until they shone, the way you would wipe a child's face before church. Out past the window the sea came in and went out again, and the moon, the real one, sat exactly where Mr Pell had put his.