Small black and grey fine line tattoo of a smiling sloth hanging on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small sloth tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A tiny sloth sits in a relaxed pose, with its long arms reaching down and its face turned towards the viewer. The tattoo is built from fine stippled and hatched linework with soft grey shading on the body. It is set alone in the centre of a pale forearm against a blurred floor and dark clothing in the background.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Sloth Animal

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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

The sloth had been sitting in the lost property cupboard since March, which Maureen said was longer than most patients on Ward 9 ever stayed anywhere. It was a soft grey toy with one ear chewed flat, and nobody had claimed it, so when the bleep went at ten past three and I had to wheel a boy down to radiology, I took it along for company.

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Ruben was eight and held the toy the whole way down the corridor, one arm looped over the handle of his drip stand. The lifts were slow, the lino shone under the strip lights, and every few steps he asked whether sloths ever got in a hurry. I told him they had never once been late for anything, which was true, because I had read the leaflet taped to the cupboard door. He decided that was the best news he had heard all week.

In radiology the scanner hummed and the technician asked him to hold still for what felt to him like a year. I sat on the plastic chair with the sloth on my knee, and it struck me that it was the first time all night I had stopped moving. Its long arms hung loose and its face was turned towards me with that mild, unbothered look, as if the whole building could take its time.

When they wheeled him back he was yawning. He pressed the toy into my hands and said I should keep it, since it was on night duty now. So it went back in the cupboard with a label in my handwriting: sloth, reliable, do not rush. Maureen laughed when she saw it. Then the bleep went again, and we both got up at the same slow pace, because there was no point doing anything else.