Tattoo flash design of a yellow lemon character with a long nose and dark collar, framed by a red circle, two banners reading 'When life gives you lemons' and 'HMMNYAAAGH', and green leaves with small

Lemon character with banners and leaves

Colour · Flash

A digital illustration of a cartoon lemon with a long pointed nose, half-closed eyes and a dark collar, set against a bright red circular background. Two cream banners curve around the figure, one above with the words 'When life gives you lemons' and one below reading 'HMMNYAAAGH', with lemon sprigs, green leaves and small white flowers filling the gaps. Bold black outlines and flat yellow fill give it a graphic, bold look suited to a flash sheet.

Character Banner Lettering Leaves 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

The crate came off the lorry at Hemingford lock with its lid already split, and I signed for it before reading the label. Forty kilos of Valencia lemons, addressed to a greengrocer in Huntingdon who had evidently given up on them. The driver shrugged, said it wasn't his problem, and was gone before I could argue. So there I stood on the landing beside my narrowboat, the Patience, with a crate the size of a coffin sitting on the towpath like an accusation.

Keep reading

Maureen, who keeps the lock and has opinions about everything that floats, came out of her hut with a flask. She looked at the fruit, then at me, and sighed the long, flat sigh of a woman who has seen every sort of mistake the river can deliver. 'You're not mooring that on your roof,' she said. 'It'll roll off at the first bump and take the rudder with it.' I told her the greengrocer was welcome to his lemons but not to my roof. She laughed, which I took as agreement.

By noon I had sold the lot off the back of the boat at a pound a bag to walkers, cyclists and a man in a fleece who wanted to know whether they were organic. I told him they were thoroughly disappointed in their situation. I kept one back, a fat sunny one with a point at the end, and set it on the tiller where it could watch me steer. Every time the hull bumped the bank I heard myself making that noise, low and put-upon, the one I'd made at the lorry, and each time the lemon seemed to share my view.

That evening I painted the cabin side: a cream scroll, a red ring, and underneath, in my worst capitals, the sound a person makes when life hands over fruit they didn't order. Maureen walked down the towpath to look at it, read it twice, and asked whether I wanted a lemon in my tea.