Colourful cartoon-style tattoo of New Zealand's map, with each island filled with character illustrations, across a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

New Zealand map tattoo across a back

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The tattoo outlines the shape of New Zealand's two main islands running diagonally down the back, with each island filled by cartoon characters. The upper island shows a figure with an orange and yellow hat and a face, while the lower island contains a green creature and a red and yellow figure with wheels. The linework is bold and outlined, with flat colour and some shading, and the design fills the shapes edge to edge.

Back Map Cartoon character Creature Face Wheel

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The proofs were still wet when Hector Pell found the two islands had swapped their tenants overnight. Mr Tangerine, the hatted gentleman who lived up top, was sitting in the green south with his brim tipped over one eye, and the wheeled fellow in red had rolled clean off the bottom corner and into the sea.

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Nobody at Dunmore and Sons Printing could say how it happened. The engraver swore he had inked each shape in its own tin. Hector, who had been the apprentice for eleven years and was still sweeping the floor, suspected the green creature, which had been coiling about the press since Tuesday and had a habit of nudging the type trays with its tail.

He spent the afternoon with a bucket of turpentine and a borrowed pair of tweezers, coaxing each character back to its proper coast. The hatted man went first, grumbling about the draught. The red wheeled fellow wanted a lift and got one, rattling up the gangway on a tin tricycle. The creature refused to budge until Hector promised it the last of the marmalade biscuits.

By six o'clock the map lay flat again, every island full and every character in its place, though nobody had asked the green creature whether it would rather be in the south. Hector pinned the sheet to the wall above the till. Tomorrow, he thought, he would check the tails.