Colour Japanese-style tattoo on a side thigh and hip, with a pink crystal, black scrollwork vines, and demon masks and creatures below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Japanese thigh piece with crystal and masks

Japanese · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A large colour tattoo wraps the outer thigh and hip, framed by black scrollwork vines. A faceted pink crystal sits at the upper centre, above a dragon-like creature, several masked demon and oni-style faces, a red-maned lion-dog and a woman's face. The shading is smooth and realistic, with orange and red tones behind the figures and greys for depth.

Japanese Thigh Crystal Vine Demon Dragon Lion Woman

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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

Sit closer, the lamp is near out, and I will not tell the second half to a boy who has been nodding since the bell. There, that is better. Now listen. Hanaoka was a city of lanterns then, and every street ended in a shrine or a pawnbroker's, and the night belonged to whoever could stand still longest without being noticed.

Keep reading

A mask-carver named Teru kept a shop under the eaves of the bridge, where the river slid black beneath the planks. He carved oni for the theatre folk and hannya for the old plays, faces with horns and gritted teeth, and he always said a good demon must look a little sorry for itself. One winter a stranger came in from the rain with a crystal wrapped in oiled cloth. It was pink as a plum seen through water, and when Teru turned it to the lamp, the light inside moved like something breathing, and a faint vine of shadow seemed to climb its facets.

"Carve me a face for this," the stranger said. "Something that will keep what it holds."

Teru worked three nights. On the fourth he found that every mask he finished had a little more of the crystal's colour in its cheeks, and that the lion-dog on his bench had turned its head toward the door when he was not looking. He wrapped the crystal in his own sash, walked it to the bridge, and dropped it into the river, which is what a sensible man does with a thing that wants feeding.

The stranger was waiting on the far bank, dry as bone. "You kept my crystal," he said. "Now you will carve the faces of everyone it has ever kept." Teru did not sleep again. Some say he is carving still, and if you walk the bridge after midnight, you may see a pink glow under the water, and a row of masks watching you from the eaves.