Colourful neo-traditional flamingo tattoo with a butterfly, roses and blue flowers on the calf of a leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pink flamingo and butterfly on a calf

Neo-trad · Calf · Colour · Photo

A large pink flamingo with a patterned body and a yellow-orange bow sits on the calf, with a small butterfly above and a red rose near its head. Blue flowers and green leaves run along the long legs below. Bold dark outlines and flat fills in pink, red, yellow, blue and green give it a bright, folk-art look against a red wall and panda-print slippers.

Neo-trad Calf Flamingo Butterfly Rose Flower Leaves Bow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourselves down by the fire and mind the cat, for this is the tale of the flamingo that walked out of the bakehouse wall. Everyone in Aldwick knows the pond at the edge of Hollin Wood, and everyone knows the bird that stands in its reeds on one leg, with a bow the colour of marigolds tied at its neck.

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Old Tobias Vell painted signs for his supper. One October the baker, Mrs Corran, asked him to make her wall less sad. He mixed his cochineal and painted a great flamingo, its body stitched with patterns like her mother's quilts, a red rose by its beak because the baker's girl had asked for roses, and a small blue butterfly for company. Blue flowers climbed its long legs and green leaves hung from them like washing. He was paid in eggs and a warm loaf, and went home pleased.

That night the wall was bare. The lanterns in the lane went out one by one, and in the dust of the road were blue flower prints, going downhill one long step at a time. The villagers followed them through the dark wood to the pond, where the flamingo stood in the reeds looking at the water as though it had waited its whole life for it. Tobias reached the bank out of breath and said, 'I only meant you to be looked at.' The bird turned its head and dropped the rose into the pond, where it floated like a small red boat.

Nobody could coax it back. So the baker took down the bare wall, and the children left blue flowers on the bank each morning. The bow hangs on the gate now, faded almost to cream. If you walk past Hollin Wood at dawn you'll see it standing there yet, with the butterfly circling its head. Don't stare too long. It doesn't care for being stared at, and neither does the cat.