Pencil sketch of a koi fish swimming upward among lotus flowers and swirling water lines, drawn as a tattoo design in a Japanese style.

Koi fish sketch with lotus flowers

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a koi fish rising upward, with its head turned towards the viewer and fins spread. Lotus-like flowers, curling waves and small bubbles surround the fish, and the body is detailed with rows of overlapping scales. The drawing uses light grey linework and shading on a plain pale background, with no colour.

Japanese Koi Fish Lotus Flower Wave Water Bubble Scale

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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

Dev found the courtyard pond on his third lap of the old wing, when the corridor lights had dropped to their night setting and the vending machine was the only thing humming. Someone had propped the atrium doors open with a fire extinguisher, and the cold came in smelling of wet slate. Under the lamp at the water's edge, a koi hung almost motionless, nose tilted towards the surface as if it were reading something written on the underside of the sky.

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He knew the fish. Mrs Okafor from renal had told him in his first week that the pond came from a ward fundraiser twenty years back, and that the koi had outlived two matrons and a boiler. A porter who had since retired to Margate had planted the lily pads along the far edge. Dev crouched and tapped the rim with one knuckle. The fish rose slowly, scales catching the light, and turned as though deciding whether to bother with him.

His pager buzzed against his hip, a long pulse and then a short one. Bed twelve wanted a blanket, or possibly the nurse wanted him to find one. He should go. Instead he took the tin of pellets from his jacket pocket, the ones he kept for emergencies, and scattered a pinch across the water. The koi climbed through the pads with a string of bubbles breaking behind it, and for a moment the whole pond looked like it was rising out of the dark.

Upstairs, bed twelve had not wanted a blanket at all. It wanted water and somebody to sit with it until the window went grey. Dev brought the cup back with the green smell of the pond still on his fingers, and when he passed the atrium on the way down to the lift, the koi was there again, nose to the glass, watching the doors as if it expected him to come back.