Small cartoon-style dolphin tattoo with a black outline, blue body and grey shading, on the outer side of a foot.

Small blue dolphin tattoo on a foot

Other · Colour · Photo

A small dolphin swims to the right, drawn with a bold black outline and filled with white, pale blue and deeper blue tones. Soft grey shading beneath the dolphin suggests water and gives it a slight lift off the skin. The tattoo sits near the centre of the frame on a fair-skinned foot, with the rest of the foot and a dark background softly out of focus.

Other Dolphin Water Sea

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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

Sit in close, the wall is cold but the peat smoke will get to you. No, don't light the lamp. The dolphin never cared for lamps, and Skerrow's fishermen learned to read the water without them. Shift your cup so I can see your face. There. You want the one about Brisk, and you'll get it right, because you've the look of someone who doesn't believe a word.

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Brisk came into Skerrow Sound every April, when the herring turned. Blue down the back, white underneath, and always swimming to the right, as if the sea had given him a rule and he was too polite to break it. The children named him for his manners. Bessie Gorrie's father said the animal was only hunting, but Bessie swore he waited for her boat each morning, slowing his rolls until her oars caught up.

Then came the February fog that sat on the Sound for nine days. Eleven boats were out on the Thursday, and the church bell rang itself hoarse trying to call them home, though there were no rocks you could see. Bessie was in the last boat. She could hear the surf but not tell which side of it she was on. Then a grey shape broke the water ahead, rolled, and swam off slow to the right, rising every few yards to look back.

She followed him through the gap at the skerry, and the other ten followed her. When the bow touched the slip, the old men say the wake glowed silver for a long moment before it slid away. Brisk never came back in the spring, and nobody on Skerrow has kept to the right-hand side of the Sound without thinking of him. Now drink up. The tide's turning, and so is my story.