Colour realism tattoo of a tiger's head with orange fur, black stripes and yellow eyes, on the outer upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic tiger head on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large tiger's head faces right, with orange fur, black stripes, white whiskers and yellow eyes rendered in soft, detailed shading. Loose green and yellow washes sit behind the head, and the lower part of the design fades into greys across the arm. The composition fills the frame, with the tiger's eyes and nose near the centre.

Realism Upper arm Tiger Big cat Stripe Whiskers Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tiger came off the narrowboat the winter Dad sold the Ruby Lou, and nobody on the Leeds and Liverpool canal believed he had taken it with him. The paint on the bow had flaked back to pale wood, but the head was still there, orange as marmalade, watching the towpath with the yellow eyes Grandad had mixed from ochre and a drop of lemon. Dad said the buyer had asked for it painted over. Dad had said no, and nobody asked why.

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I found the boat in March, moored below the lock at Bingley with its cabin doors chained. Sodden leaves had gathered in the gunwale, and a faded green wash of reeds ran along the side, the same green Grandad put behind every tiger he ever painted. I stood on the lock beam with the wind coming off the water and tried to remember what he had told me about stripes. Paint the black first, he used to say, then argue with it until it looks like weather.

Under the cabin roof, wedged behind a tin of linseed and a wind-up radio, I found a roll of brown paper wrapped in a bread bag. It was a pencil sketch of the same head, and beneath it, in his small careful hand, a line: Not for sale. Watching you, not the other way round. I laughed out loud on the empty water, and the tiger on the bow seemed to listen.

I didn't take the boat. I took the paper, rolled it back into its bread bag, fastened the chain again, and walked up the towpath with those yellow eyes on my back all the way to the car park.