Palm tree and wave on the upper back
Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo
A black and grey tattoo shows a tall palm tree on the left, with a large curling wave on the right above a calm, shaded sea and horizon. The palm fronds are solid dark shapes, while the wave uses soft greys and fine highlights to show spray and water texture. The scene sits inside a rounded composition with soft clouds fading into the sky behind it.
Find an artist for thisTake 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 rain had found the gap in the canvas again, and Pete Ferris gave up moving his stock. Forty prints of the same imagined beach lay in cellophane on the trestle table: a leaning palm, a curl of grey water, a horizon nobody in Saltcombe had ever seen from their own front step. Down the lane the fishmonger hosed scales into the drain, and a gull stood on the bin as if it had paid for the pitch.
Keep reading
At half past twelve a woman in a yellow sou'wester stopped at the table and wiped her glasses on her sleeve. She didn't look at the palm, or the sky. She looked at the wave for a long time, the way people watch a bus that has already pulled away.
"My husband tried to paint that," she said. "He sat on the sea wall every Sunday with a pencil and never got past the water."
Pete turned a print over in his hands. The palm he had copied from a calendar in a dentist's waiting room. The wave he had made up entirely, because the real sea in Saltcombe never rose like that. "Did he ever finish one?"
She counted coins from a jar she'd brought in her pocket, pressed them into his palm, and tucked the print under her coat. He watched her walk towards the harbour, where the actual water lay flat and dull under the rain. Only the wave in her arms was moving.
More like this
From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.