Colour tattoo of two purple and teal koi fish swimming through stylised blue waves, in Japanese style, on a forearm, shown twice side by side.

Purple and teal koi fish on forearm

Japanese · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The image shows a colour tattoo of two koi fish, one purple and one blue, swimming among stylised teal and blue waves that curl around the arm. The fish have bold black outlines, detailed scale shading and expressive eyes, while the waves use layered blues and white highlights. The same design appears on a second arm beside the first, so the composition is a side-by-side comparison against a dark background.

Japanese Forearm Koi Fish Wave Water

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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

Keep stirring, boy, the stock catches if you stop. You've been eyeing those two fish painted on the hatch above the range since we left Lisbon, so I'll tell you how they came to be there. Dunmore painted them the winter the Ada Vane lay up in Bristol, with a pot of violet from a chemist's shop and a tin of teal he'd nicked from the dockyard. He said they were koi, fish that swim up waterfalls in a country he'd never seen, and that if they got high enough they turned into dragons. Nonsense, of course. But he drew them chasing each other round a curl of wave all the same.

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The trouble came off Finisterre. A squall dropped on us out of nothing, the galley tipped over, and every pan went sliding into the scuppers. Dunmore hung on to the hatch rail with both hands while the sea came over the bow, and when we finally limped into harbour the purple paint had been scoured half off by the spray. He sat on the scrubbed boards with a brush in his fist and didn't say a word for an hour. Then he mixed more violet and went over the fish again, slow and careful, as if the thing might bolt.

So when you see them nose to tail up there, don't go thinking they're racing. They've been swimming the same circle since before you were born, and they'll keep at it long after the Ada Vane is firewood. Now pass me that ladle, and mind your fingers on the pot.