Colour tattoo of a pink cartoon starfish with a shocked face rising from a sunset sea, framed by rope and topped by a shell, on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sunset sea and cartoon starfish on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A cartoon pink starfish with wide eyes and an open mouth sits above a choppy blue sea, set under a sky of pink, orange and purple clouds. A rope border frames the scene in an oval, with a shaded scallop shell and small starfish at the base. The shading is soft and painterly in the sky and water, with bold outlines around the cartoon figure and rope.

Realism Neo-trad Thigh Sunset Sea Cloud Starfish Cartoon character Shell Rope frame

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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

Dear Tobin, the tide has been out for three days and the mud below the harbour wall is full of things nobody has bothered to name. Yesterday I dug up a pink tile with a face on it, a starfish with eyes like two boiled eggs and a mouth open wide enough to swallow a gull. Your great-uncle Ferris swears it is the same creature the old ferry captains painted on their bows, the one that was always caught mid-shout. We keep it on the windowsill now. The sky over the wall went orange last night, then purple, then the colour of a bruise, and I thought of you out on the reef boats with your coil of rope and your dented tin cup.

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The rope is what matters, love. Ferris says the old ones framed their best views in a loop of rope so the sea could not get in. He has a faded photograph of the bow of the Halcyon with a painted scallop shell at the bottom, the same shell that sits on your grandmother's dresser, chipped on one edge where she dropped it in the big flood. I told him the shell was a fool's souvenir. He told me I had no romance in me. That is true, but I have you.

Last week the council men came and said the wall would be lowered by spring. Ferris laughed until he coughed. He said the sea has been coming for a long time and always wears a look of surprise just before it takes something. Then he went quiet, and I saw him looking at the tile for a long while.

Come home before the spring tides. Bring the rope. We will hang the tile over the door where the lamp can reach it, and we will sit on the step and watch the water argue with the wall. Your loving Nan, Ruth.