Colour Japanese style tattoo of a koi fish, lotus flowers and a red maple leaf wrapping around an upper arm and shoulder.

Koi fish and lotus flowers on an upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large koi fish with grey and black scales and yellow fins swims up the arm, with its head near the shoulder. Orange and yellow lotus flowers with dark red centres sit below it, and a red maple leaf and grey wave lines fill the space above. The shading is smooth and the colours are warm against the grey and black scales.

Japanese Upper arm Shoulder Koi Fish Lotus Maple leaf Wave Flower

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

"Sit closer, the lamps won't reach your ankles and the wind's come round off the Fens," said old Mother Teague, tucking her shawl over her knees on the upturned crate. "This one's about a carp called Ossory, who was the fattest fish in Harrow Mill pond and didn't care who knew it."

Keep reading

One evening a heron named Crake stood on the sluice and told him that at the top of the weir, where the water fell white as washing, there was a gate of red wood. Any carp who leapt through it would come down the other side a dragon. The other carp laughed themselves sideways. Ossory tucked a lotus seed in his cheek for luck, the way the Pell boys carry conkers, and went up the spillway in the dark.

He made it higher than any fish had, through the roar and the cold spray, until the gate was close enough to smell of tar. Then he looked back. Down in the pond, the lotus flowers were opening in the first light, orange as a bonfire, and he understood what he'd been leaving. A red maple leaf came turning down the current, bright as a float, and he caught it on his fin like a ticket and hung there in the falls.

He turned round and swam home the way he'd come. Crake never forgave him. And if you walk the mill path at dusk, you'll see a single gold scale going round and round on the water, slow as a clock hand, and that's Ossory keeping an eye on the flowers. Now, who's got a penny for the hoopla?