Pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing two shaded koi fish within black tribal-style lines, with flowers and swirls, in black and grey.

Koi fish and flower tattoo design

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of two koi fish arranged in a circle, one swimming above the other, with scale patterns and soft grey shading on their bodies. Two flowers with leaves and curling black swirls sit at the top and bottom, framed by bold black tribal-style lines. The design is in black and grey on a white background and is centred on the page.

Japanese Botanical Koi Fish Flower Leaves Swirl Scroll Circle

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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

The net comes up over the gunwale grey and heavy, and you are the one who has to pick it clean before the skipper sees the tally. Cod, mostly, flapping gold-eyed in the lamplight, and a crab with one claw that snaps at your glove. Halloran shouts from the wheelhouse that the cod are short again, that the Lantern Rose is not a charity for gulls, and you nod because you have heard it every Tuesday since March.

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Then, tangled in the last fold of mesh, you find two fish that have no business being in the North Sea. They are pale as pencil shavings, scaled in neat diamonds, and when you lift them the light runs silver along their backs. They do not thrash. They turn in the bucket, nose to tail, in a slow circle, as though the bucket were the whole ocean and they had agreed to share it.

You cut them free with the mate's knife, the mesh parting with a sound like a sigh. Halloran sees you do it and says nothing, which is worse than shouting. Your wages come up short that Friday, and you don't mind, because on the quay that night you watch the tide ring the harbour wall in long curls, each one folding back into the next, and you think of the two of them out there, still going round.