Fresh colour tattoo of a stylised animal outlined in black on a shoulder, filled with blue and orange with red shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised animal tattoo on shoulder

Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A stylised animal figure sits on the shoulder, outlined in heavy black ink. The interior is filled with soft blue and orange tones, with red patches and loose, blended shading. The surrounding skin is reddened and the edge of the wrap paper is visible, suggesting the tattoo was recently done.

Shoulder Animal Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stew had been on the boil since before the first bell, and still the cook could not get the bear off the bulkhead. Her name was Hester Vane and she had worked the galley of the Marrow for nineteen winters. Every boat on the Forth had a story about its galley, and the Marrow's was that the beast painted over the stove was older than the boat itself.

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Nobody remembered who had daubed it there. Blue for the cold water, orange for the fire in the hearth, and a black line round it as thick as a mooring rope so the paint would hold in the steam. When Hester stirred the pot the crew swore the animal shifted its weight, and that it leaned a little further over the flame each time the seas ran rough.

One January night the cabin boy, Dun, dropped the ladle into the broth and swore he saw the bear lick it. Hester laughed and told him to fetch the salt. But she took the lamp to the bulkhead anyway and found the orange wash wet to the touch, as though someone had painted it within the hour, and a smear of soot on the outline pointing toward the hatch.

She served the meal regardless, and fed the watch, and when the Marrow came into harbour at dawn the bear was dry and quiet again. Hester never scrubbed it off. She said a galley that kept a bear was never short of company, and when Dun grew up and sailed away he took her broth recipe with him and left the ladle hanging where the animal could reach it.