Full arm sleeve tattoo of an underwater reef scene with hammerhead sharks, sea turtles and coral in realistic colour across the upper arm and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Underwater sleeve with hammerhead sharks

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The three-panel photo shows a full sleeve from shoulder to wrist, with hammerhead sharks swimming in blue water near the top of the arm. Sea turtles, coral and tropical fish, including clownfish, fill the lower sections against a shaded blue background. The shading is smooth and the colour is rich throughout, and the same sleeve is shown from three angles.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Sea turtle Coral Sea

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The drowned castle of Harrow Head had been a ruin for longer than anyone's grandmother could remember, and by the time Tam Cordle came back from the mainland the reef had grown over its walls like a shawl. He was sent to fetch the last of the tithe from the sea gate, and nobody thought to warn him about the sharks.

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They came out of the blue water in a slow ring, a dozen grey hammerheads turning their wide heads like the arms of a sundial. Their leader was older than the rest, scarred along one flank, and when she looked at Tam her eye was as bright as a lamp in a shuttered window. 'You're the miller's boy,' she said, though her mouth made no sound. 'Your father owed us a wedding.'

Tam had no wedding to give. He had a silver clasp his mother had pressed into his palm and a bad knee. He offered the clasp. The shark took it gently in her teeth and turned, and she led him past the coral heads where clownfish darted between the anemones, past the turtles drowsing on the broken stairs, into the great hall where the old queen's chairs stood empty under weed.

The hall was full of fish that had nowhere else to go. The queen's crown lay on a sill, green with growth, and when Tam lifted it a shoal of silver fish spilled out like rumour. 'Take the crown up,' said the shark, 'and let the reef keep the rest.' He carried it to the surface and set it on the rocks, and the tithe was never asked for again. Ever after, the fishermen of Harrow Head say that if you see a hammerhead circling at dusk, you should step aside and let it pass.