Colour tattoo of three small green sea turtles swimming up the ankle, with small bubbles between them.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three sea turtles on an ankle

Ankle · Colour · Photo

Three small sea turtles swim diagonally up the side of an ankle, each with a grey-green shell, yellow-green head and flippers, and dark outlines. Small dots and circles representing bubbles trail between them. The turtles use soft shading on the shells and a clean, simple composition against the skin.

Ankle Sea turtle Turtle Bubble Ocean

Find an artist for this

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

Shift along and mind the rope, because this tale goes slow, the way the sea does when it has nowhere urgent to be. My grandfather kept the shooting gallery on the sea wall at Walmer, and every September the fair rolled through with its steam organ and painted horses. Beside the candyfloss van stood a glass tank of salt water, and in it lived three hatchling turtles nobody had asked for, sent over on a fishing smack from somewhere warmer.

Keep reading

The smallest one had a crack in her shell like a dropped plate, and she would not stop swimming. Each night when the lamps went out, the three of them went round the tank in a line, nose to tail, blowing bubbles at the glass as if counting the bulbs. Mrs Ada Vine, who sold toffee apples from the next stall, swore they were searching for a way out. My grandfather said they were only practising the crossing.

The fair closed for winter on the last Saturday of October. The showman sold the horses, the organ and the gallery, but he could not bring himself to sell the turtles. On the grey morning the lorry pulled away, he carried the tank down the shingle at low tide and tipped the water at the edge of the waves. The three of them hung a moment in the foam, then turned and went out in a line, bubbles lifting behind them like a dropped string of beads.

Nobody from the fair ever saw them again. Every spring, though, the gulls on Walmer beach picked at a faint trail of dots pressed into the wet sand, and my grandfather would tell you the tide still remembered the way out.