Full back tattoo of an orange and black tiger battling a red and cream snake among clouds, in Japanese style, with further tattoos on both arms.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tiger and snake full back piece

Japanese · Back · Colour · Photo

A large full-back tattoo shows a snarling orange and black striped tiger with a spotted snake coiled around it, with a red-tongued snake head at the lower left. Shading is smooth and layered, with bold black stripes and grey swirling clouds filling the background. Vivid orange, red and cream dominate against the dark backdrop, and the design spreads across the shoulders and down the back with tattoos visible on both upper arms.

Japanese Back Upper arm Tiger Snake Cloud Back piece Leopard print

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

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The man who pulled in on Tuesday wanted only water and a tin of peaches, but he stood under the old sign by the pump for the best part of an hour. You remember Dad's board, the grey clouds curling round the edges and the orange cat he never quite got right. The stranger asked who had painted the tiger. I told him nobody had, it was just the sun working on the paint. He shook his head and said the tiger was fighting, and I should look at where the snake had its coils wrapped round the forelegs.

Dad always said that snake was a leopard that had got into the wrong story. He liked to tell how the two of them had fought on a mountain road for three nights while the rain came down, and neither would let go, so the clouds took pity and carried them both down to the valley. I never believed a word, but I kept the board the way he left it, even after the wind took the top corner and the grit ate the red from the tongue.

On Wednesday the stranger came back with a ladder from his truck and asked if he could touch up the snake's tongue. I said yes, mostly because nobody had asked me anything in months. He worked until the light went orange, dabbing the red back in with a brush no thicker than a matchstick, and when he came down he left the ladder and a thirty-pound note under the peaches tin.

The tongue looks sharper now. I haven't had the heart to tell him that the tiger has turned its head, just slightly, towards the road.

Love, Nell