Man seen from behind with a full colour Japanese style tattoo covering his back, arms and legs, including dragons, flowers and a golden disc.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Full body Japanese style back and limb tattoo

Japanese · Back · Colour · Photo

A man stands with his back to the camera, wearing only a white loincloth, with a large colour tattoo covering his back, both arms and the visible parts of his legs. The design includes a red figure, a golden disc, dragon-like forms and flowers, with bold outlines and dense shading. The plain grey backdrop keeps the focus on the tattooed skin.

Japanese Back Upper arm Forearm Thigh Calf Dragon Flower Figure Cloud

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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 banner came down the valley on a handcart the week after the Ferndale roof fall, wrapped in oilcloth and tied with binder twine. Dai Morgan's wife had paid for it with the last of their coal tickets. The painter spoke little English, but he had sat three nights in the back room of the lodge with his brushes and a jar of red lacquer, and when he unrolled it on the billiard table we all went quiet.

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A red figure in armour stood at the centre, fierce-eyed, one hand raised as though stopping traffic. Behind his shoulder hung a golden disc the size of a cartwheel, and green dragons coiled up through painted clouds on either side. Along the bottom ran heavy orange chrysanthemums. Old Evan called the figure the Sun Guardian of the north pits. I said nothing, because I had seen the painter's hands shake as he lifted the cloth, and a man does not shake over a picture of a saint.

We hung it in the lamp room, facing the cage shaft. Three months later the cage jammed at two hundred feet with eleven men on it, and the gold disc caught the hanging lamp so the whole shaft seemed to flare. My brother was one of them. They came up hand over hand on the rope, and every man who stepped out looked up at the painted figure before he looked at his family.

The painter never came back for his payment. I kept the banner clean, dusting the gold each Friday with a rag and a little spit, the way I'd watched him do. Some mornings, when the horn goes and the lamps are lit, I still look up at that bright disc before I check the roof.