Large Japanese style dragon tattoo covering a person's back, with grey scales, red accents and black clouds.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Japanese dragon across a full back

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large dragon wraps across the whole of the back, with its head and open jaws near the shoulder and clawed feet at the lower side. The scales and outlines are worked in black and grey, with shaded clouds behind the body. Red is used for the fins and the dragon's underside, giving the design strong contrast against the grey.

Japanese Back Dragon Cloud Scale Claw Fin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hana, the ink on the eastern panel has dried wrong again, and the monks have sent word that the abbot will not pay for a dragon that looks like a hungry cat. Come up the mountain before the rain. I have left the grey pigment soaking in its shell and told the boy not to touch the vermilion, though he will, because he thinks red is the only colour worth the cost.

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The dragon is nearly finished. It climbs the width of the screen out of a bank of cloud, its body a long river of scales, each one outlined so fine you can see the brush hesitate at the joins. I shaded the cloud behind it with a wash so pale it looks like breath on cold glass. The underside I painted in the same red as the fins, sharp as a cut on a white sleeve. The abbot asked why the belly must be bright when no one will ever look up at it. I told him the dragon knows it is there.

Its jaws are open near the top corner, teeth bared at a crane that has wandered too low over the pines. The claws are the last thing I will do. My master used to say a claw should look as if it has already closed on something, so I will wait until I know what the dragon wants. Some days I think it wants the rain to return. Some days I think it only wants to be drawn properly, once, before the screen is folded into a storehouse and forgotten.

Bring the good hare-hair brush, and keep the boy away from the clouds. Your brother, Kenji.