Bold traditional style tattoo sleeve on a raised leg, showing a panther head, a swallow, a sailing ship and red flowers, with flash sheets on the shop wall behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional panther and ship sleeve

Traditional · Other · Colour · Photo

A raised limb carries a full traditional style sleeve. A panther head with open jaws sits at the top, with a swallow, red and pink roses, dark leaves and a sailing ship lower down. The bold black outlines are filled with saturated reds, greens, blues and yellows, and the background shows a wall of framed flash designs.

Traditional Other Panther Swallow Ship Rose Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

"Ship first," Eli Marsh said, tapping the framed sheet on Ada Pryce's back-room wall. "Then the swallow. Panther can wait till I've got the money for the roses." Ada laughed and pulled the stool closer to the lamp. Swallows were for men who had come home, she told him, and a swallow counted the miles before it was allowed to land. Eleven months on a collier that had rounded the Horn twice had left him with a sailor's patience and very little of his pay.

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She drew the barque in black first, three masts, sails belled out, the hull heavy as a church. Eli watched the needle the way other men watched a kettle. Halfway down the forearm he told her about the Margaret Ann, which had gone under off the Falklands with the cook's brother still asleep in his bunk. Ada said nothing and kept the line steady. She had learned long ago that the needle could hear a man's voice better than she could.

When the ship was done she painted the sea green and ochre, then set two roses on the crest of a wave, red as a pub sign. The panther came later, another session, its jaws open over the elbow like a gate swung wide. Eli came back in March with the swallow still unfinished and asked her to leave the jaws open, so there would be room for something to come through. Ada said she always left a little space in a good piece. He nodded, pulled his sleeve down, and went out into the wet street without looking back at the wall of flash.