Japanese style arm sleeve tattoo with blue waves, peony-like flowers, clouds and a white moon, photographed against a grey background.

Japanese wave and flower arm sleeve

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A long arm sleeve shows peony or chrysanthemum blooms, swirling clouds, a white moon and blue waves with black outlines. The linework is bold and the wave and cloud forms are shaded with blue and grey washes, while the flowers are mostly left as line and light tone on the skin. The composition runs across the arm in a horizontal band, with the waves and wind lines filling the lower half.

Japanese Upper arm Forearm Flower Peony Chrysanthemum Wave Cloud Moon Wind

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lamp is nearly out and I am too old to shout over the wind off the bay. You want the story of Ichirō and the sea wall? Then hush and listen.

Keep reading

When the monastery was still new, the abbot gave the novice Ichirō a brush, a pot of blue, and a sheet of paper the size of a temple door. Paint the sea, he said, and do not come back until the sea has stopped trying to climb out of the picture. Ichirō painted waves for nine days. Each one rolled too far, or curled like a fist, or lay flat as a dropped cloth. On the tenth morning the abbot found the paper hung on the cloister wall, mostly bare, with one pale circle in the upper corner, the moon, and beneath it a thin grey line of wind pressing the water down.

The novice said he had grown tired of the sea. He had painted the moon instead, because the moon does not need to be correct. It only needs to be seen. He had let the waves keep their black edges, sharp as the cliffs at Nagato. He had let the clouds spiral off into nothing. And in the abbot's garden he had left the peonies unfinished on the paper, just their lines, so the cream of the sheet showed through each petal like light.

The abbot said nothing for a long while. Then he dragged a stool beside the wall, sat down, and asked for tea. The boy poured it. Steam climbed toward the painted moon and the wind carried it over the roofs, and the old man drank his cup slowly, looking at the picture the way you look at a face you have known for years. Then he said the sea could wait its turn, and went to bed.