Coloured pencil drawing of a tiger's green-gold eyes and striped brow with rainbow drips, a design that could work as tattoo flash.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tiger eyes with rainbow drips

Colour · Flash

A coloured pencil drawing of a tiger's green-gold eyes, nose and striped brow on a plain white background. The shading is soft and sketchy, with yellow, orange, pink, purple and blue strokes that run downward like drips beneath and beside the eyes. The composition is centred and symmetrical, with the colour fading out towards the edges of the design.

Tiger Eye Stripe Drip Nose

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

The rain got to the cabin side before the varnish did, so the tiger I painted on the Mercy Jane has been running colours since Tuesday. Mr Okonkwo at the lock says it looks like the boat is crying a rainbow, and Mrs Pryce at Brentford wants it scrubbed off before the Regatta. I told her the eyes stay. Gold ochre, two coats, and I put the highlights in last with a dry brush, the way Dad taught us to do the lamp-glass on the old Severn trows.

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You'll laugh, Tom, but I started it with a pencil, not a brush. I drew the eyes three nights running on the back of a tide chart, trying to make the stripe above them look like it was listening rather than looking. In the end the drips came from the pencils themselves, the colours I'd been using to shade the water on the wheelhouse ceiling, and they were so pretty I couldn't bring myself to wipe them.

Last night the river came up a foot and the barge sat low against the bank. I went out in my coat to check the mooring, and the tiger was lit by the lamp from the lock-keeper's window, the drips still wet and glowing pink and blue down to the waterline. Every stripe on that animal was put there by someone who had to stand still long enough to be looked at, and the eyes were looking straight at me.

Mrs Pryce can have her fresh coat in September. Until then the tiger stays as it is, and if anyone asks why the rain has painted it, tell them it was done by a woman who didn't like to rush a face. Write soon. The kettle's on the stove, and the cat has taken to sleeping under the tiger's chin.