Full arm sleeve tattoo in Japanese style showing a blue-green scaled serpent, red flames and dragon heads, shown from three angles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Full sleeve with dragons and serpent in Japanese style

Japanese · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A full arm sleeve covered in colourful Japanese-style imagery, with a blue and green scaled serpent winding down the arm and dragon heads near the wrist. Red flames and clouds fill the gaps between the creatures, and the scales are shaded with fine detail. The photo shows the sleeve from three angles against a dark background, with the upper arm and shoulder at the top of the frame.

Japanese Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Dragon Serpent Flame Scale Sleeve Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada, the tide has been wrong all week and Mr Pellow swears the mackerel have gone out past the Mewstone because of the heat. I have not seen a single fish. What I have seen is the new lamp-keeper's boy come down the quay every evening with a paper tucked under his arm, showing it to anyone who will look, and it is the strangest drawing I have ever laid eyes on. A blue-green serpent going round and round like the bore of a river, all scales, each one shaded so you would swear you could lift them off with a thumbnail. And at the foot of it, down by the wrist, two dragon heads with their jaws open and red fire coming off them like breath on a frosty morning.

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I asked him where he got it. He said his uncle had it done in a room above the chandler's on Fore Street, four hours with the needle, and that the man who did it would not let him look in the mirror until the last line was finished. He had to be walked back to the boarding house with his eyes shut, Ada. Think of that. A grown lad trusting a stranger's hands with his whole arm, and the stranger giving back the sea and the sky and the fire, all of it.

I told him the serpent looked hungry. He laughed and said that was the point, that a thing with that many scales has to keep moving or it sinks. I thought about that all the way home. Your father used to say the same of the boats. So I am writing to tell you the Gracie is ready. Come home on Thursday's coach and we will take her out past the Mewstone together, weather permitting, and you may bring that sketchbook of yours. Bring the red ink too.