Realistic black and grey tattoo of a gorilla's face with a tree frog on a branch, across the upper back and shoulder blade.

Gorilla and frog on a shoulder blade

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large realistic tattoo on the upper back shows a close-up gorilla face, with its brow, wrinkled skin and direct gaze rendered in fine tonal shading. A tree frog sits on a branch in front of the gorilla's nose and mouth, with detailed skin texture and bright eye highlights. The soft dark background blends the two subjects together, and the design sits across the shoulder blade.

Realism Back Shoulder Frog Branch

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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

You have been told not to look the old beast in the eye, so naturally you do nothing else. The gorilla was carried up from Punt on a ship that smelled of resin and fear, and in the menagerie behind the Canopic Gate he has been given a pen of palm trunks and a sour bath of river water. He sits with his heavy brow lowered and his hands folded between his knees, watching you the way the customs clerks watched the cargo, as if he is adding up what you are worth.

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The frog arrived in a jar of wet leaves, a gift from a sailor who wanted a coin for his trouble. You nailed a fig branch across the pen to keep it out of the damp and fed it moths from the lamp. This morning it sits on the branch just before the gorilla's broad nose, throat pulsing, entirely unbothered. The ape has not moved in an hour. Only his eyes have, following the frog's slow blink the way a creditor follows a debtor across the market.

At the midday bell the overseer calls for the cages to be counted. You stand with the tally tablet pressed to your chest and count the animals twice, because the tablet asks for two. The gorilla does not blink when you say the number aloud, and neither does the frog. Something in the old face has loosened, the scowl softening around the mouth, as if he has decided the quiet is his to keep.

That evening you find the pen unlatched, the branch bare, and two sets of wet prints leading through the gap in the wall toward the reed marsh. The overseer swears and sends men out with torches. You stand at the gate and say nothing, which is the first honest thing you have done since the ship docked. Somewhere in the reeds a frog croaks twice, and the old ape, waiting by the drained bath, looks back at you as though you were the one who had been caught.