Black and grey realism tattoo of a geisha with a lotus flower and a butterfly on the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geisha portrait with lotus on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A geisha with a styled updo and a sheer veil across her face is shown in close, detailed shading, with a large lotus flower in the lower part of the design. A pale butterfly sits at the upper left, and soft grey clouds of shading frame the figure. The image shows two side-by-side views of the same tattoo on the arm, with smooth gradients and high contrast throughout.

Realism Japanese Upper arm Shoulder Geisha Lotus Butterfly Portrait Flower Hair Veil

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit down, the lot of you, and mind the nets. You want to know why Old Tobias never fished the grey mornings? I'll tell you, though my knees complain at every word. The Marigold went out from Rye harbour in the fog of 1931 with six men aboard and a painted girl under the wheelhouse window, her hair piled high and a gauze scarf drawn across her face to keep the spray off.

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Her name was Ume, the painter said, though he'd never been further east than Gravesend. He bought his colours cheap from a sailor who swore the cloud shading was soot and rain mixed together. Every night the crew sat under her and watched the pale butterfly at the top of the frame. When the wind backed round to the south it seemed to lift. Tobias always said it was the only thing on that boat that never lied.

Then came the night the fog thickened to porridge and the engine coughed twice and died. They drifted past the Ness with the water black as slate. Someone lit a lamp, and its light caught the lotus painted low on the window, petals open on the swell. The men swore the sea beneath it went flat as a pond in summer. Ume's scarf stopped stirring altogether. They rowed by her face and the water let them go.

Nobody ever found the painter. The Marigold came home with its name and its girl and nothing else changed, except that Tobias started leaving a saucer of rice on the sill each time he sailed. Ask him why and he'll only nod at the window. Mind your step on the slipway now, it's slick where the rice falls.