Painterly tattoo of a panda face above a pink galaxy heart, with black ink drips and red washes, on a lower leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Panda and galaxy heart on a calf

Calf · Mixed · Photo

A large panda's face and upper body are shown in soft black and grey shading, with a pink and red galaxy heart beneath it. Black ink runs downward in drips and splatters, and red washes sit at the edges of the design. The photo shows the same tattoo twice side by side, with the skin and lower leg filling most of the frame.

Calf Panda Bear Heart Galaxy Ink drip Splatter

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

I was painting the harbour wall when the rain came in sideways off the Sound, the way it does in October, and I had only got as far as the bear's ears. Hamish from the chandlery stood underneath with his hood up, telling me it would wash off by Monday and the council would be after me for it. I told him the council could paint over it themselves.

Keep reading

The bear was for Ailsa, who had asked for a panda the summer before, after a school trip to the mainland zoo where she'd watched one eat bamboo like a man reading the paper. I'd promised her. Every promise on this island is a wet one. So I kept at it, black ink thinned with rain, letting it run down the stone in the long drips the weather wanted anyway.

By dusk the face had gone soft at the edges, the grey bleeding into the grey, and the rain had carried a black stripe down from one eye like mascara on a wet cheek. I stood back and thought it looked sad. Then Ailsa came down the hill with a jam jar of paint she'd nicked from her mother's shed, pinks and reds, and a bottle of glitter left over from a Christmas cracker. She painted a heart beneath the bear's chin while the rain kept coming.

"It's a galaxy," she said, when I asked what it was. "So he's got somewhere to go." The rain ran through the stars and out of the heart, and in the morning, when the sun came over the Sound, the heart was still there, bright as anything, and the bear had sunk into the wall as if he had always been part of it.