Black and grey sketch tattoo of Totoro, a smaller Totoro, soot sprites and leaves across an upper arm and shoulder, in a fine line style.

Totoro and soot sprites on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a large Totoro character holding a leaf-shaped umbrella, with a smaller Totoro and three soot sprites among layered leaves and stems. The linework is sketchy and varied in weight, with stippled shading on the leaves and the creature bodies. The design is entirely in black and grey ink and wraps around the upper arm and onto the shoulder.

Fine line Upper arm Shoulder Totoro Soot sprite Umbrella Leaves

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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

Hush now, the kettle isn't boiling yet, so settle your feet under the blanket. Ferry Lane was a house of sixteen rooms in those days, and the coal cellar under the stairs was full of soot sprites, little black dust-balls with eyes like wet pennies. Nobody paid them much mind. They came up with the coal and went back down with the ash, and that was the arrangement.

Keep reading

The winter Ada Penhallow arrived, she carried an umbrella with a broad leaf for a handle and nothing else but a suitcase of letters gone soft with rain. She took the attic room. The first night the wind came sideways off the bay and she sat on the top step and wouldn't come down to supper. Something was sitting beside her, big as a sack of flour and grey as a sleeping badger, holding a leaf over both their heads. It had ears like a barn owl's and a grin that never needed teeth.

Ada never said who it was. She said it stayed until the thaw and smelled of camphor and cut grass. Each morning there were three new sprites lined up on the cellar hatch, and each morning the coal went down a little slower, and the house never once went cold.

So when the rain starts on the slates tonight, don't go looking for it. Leave the back door on the latch, and a leaf on the step if you've got one. Now go to sleep.