Full Japanese-style sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and forearm, showing pink cherry blossoms, grey waves and a fish-like creature with a yellow eye.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Japanese full sleeve with cherry blossoms and fish

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A full arm sleeve runs from the upper arm down to the forearm, with pink and red cherry blossoms scattered across black and grey clouds and waves. A large fish-like creature, possibly a koi, with a yellow eye and scaled head wraps around the lower arm. The shading is mostly black and grey with bold red and yellow accents, and the photo is taken at an angle against a blurred background.

Japanese Upper arm Forearm Cherry blossom Fish Koi Wave Cloud Sleeve

Find an artist for this

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

Ilse had been baking in the same stone oven since before the lane had a name, and every morning she was up before the church clock, lighting the fire in the dark while the rain ran off the roof. Out back there was a water butt under the drainpipe. Her husband had put a carp in it years ago to eat the mosquitoes, and when he died she kept feeding it the heel of each loaf, because it seemed rude not to.

Keep reading

The carp was big, the colour of old copper, with a yellow eye that watched the back door. It never begged. It took the crumbs and went back under the leaves, and that was the arrangement.

In April a storm came up from the coast and tore the blossom off the orchard across the road. Ilse found the lane white in the morning, petals stuck to the wet cobbles and more of them floating on the butt. The carp had come up under the lid, which it had never done, and it hung there with its mouth open, looking at her as if she owed it something. Then she saw the petals were moving. They drifted out of the butt, across the yard, under the gate and down the lane towards the river, all going one way like a line of ants. The carp turned slowly and followed them. Ilse put down her peel and went after it in her apron, barefoot, the cobbles cold under her.

At the bridge the water was dark and fast. The carp waited in the shallows, and the petals had stopped. She stood there until the sky turned grey over the mill. When she got back, the oven was too hot and a loaf had caught on the bottom. She set a warm one on the windowsill for the river, then went to the butt. Two petals floated there and nothing else. She tipped the heel of bread in anyway.