Realistic colour tattoo of a striped shield with a white star and a shaded portrait in the centre, on a calf.

Striped shield with star and portrait on calf

Realism · Calf · Colour · Photo

A round shield with a white star on blue, set against red and white stripes, with a shaded face portrait across the centre. The shading is smooth and realistic, with strong reds and blues and bright highlights on the skin. A faded older outline tattoo sits lower down the calf and is not legible.

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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

You spot the shield before you spot anyone holding it. It leans against the wall at the back of the sports hall, a round board the width of a dinner plate, ringed in red and white with a blue centre and a white star you can pick out from across the room. Someone has painted a face into the middle, with a jaw and a square of shadow under the brow, the sort of work the art department never managed on its best days. Thirty-one years ago it was a bin lid from the caretaker's yard. You know that because you helped carry it.

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Dev Okafor finds you by the orange squash and hands you a paper cup. He sat behind you in Chemistry and once set fire to his own exercise book for a bet. "Pryce confiscated it in Year Nine," he says, nodding at the wall. "Called it a weapon. Remember what we did?" You remember. The whole year group took turns running it across the playground in the sleet, each of you shouting a name that wasn't your own, until Pryce came out of the staffroom with his tea going cold in his hand and stopped to watch.

Dev says the face was restored last spring by somebody's nephew, and you both agree it looks more like Mr Pryce than the original ever did. You laugh so hard the wine runs over your wrist. When you look up, the shield is catching the strip lights, the star brighter than anything else in the room, and for a moment the hall is a playground again, still raining, and nobody has yet been told who is supposed to pick it up.

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