Full colour realism tattoo of a shark, tropical fish, kelp and coral covering the side of a torso, shown on the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Underwater scene with shark on a side torso

Realism · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A large underwater scene covers the side of the torso, with a great white style shark swimming near the top and a spotted fish, a fish with a large eye, and an orange fish lower down. Kelp, seaweed and coral fill the background and edges. The shading is smooth and detailed, with bright blues, reds, oranges and yellows that give depth to the sea and the marine life.

Realism Ribs Shark Fish Coral Seaweed Shell Sea

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

Nobody at the reunion remembered Mr Ardle's fish tank except me, and I only remembered because of the orange fish. It had lived in the corner of Room 14 for eleven years, a thin, split-finned thing we all called Biscuit. When Dawn Pelling asked me over the crisps whether I still had the key to the cupboard, I laughed too loudly.

Keep reading

The cupboard held spare filters and a plastic shark nobody had dared throw out. In the Lower Sixth we swore that one night we would break in and drop the shark into the school pond. We never did. Instead Dawn and I sat on the sports hall steps in February and drew the whole reef on the back of a fire drill notice: kelp like loose hair, a spotted fish with a face like a bishop, coral in fat orange knots, a shell with a door in it.

Last week I found that drawing in a shoebox. I brought it along folded in four, and when I opened it on the trestle table between the sausage rolls and the name badges, people leaned in and argued about which fish was which. Dawn tapped the shark's grin with a fingernail. "You gave him teeth," she said. "I gave him a reason," I said, and she laughed the way she used to before the careers fair.

Nobody asked where Biscuit ended up. I know, though. She went home in a Tupperware pot on the last day of term, and Dawn's mum buried her under the rhubarb. Some things survive only in ink and paper, and the ones that last are the ones we spent the longest colouring.