Realism black and grey tattoo of a Volkswagen camper van covered in stickers and badges, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Volkswagen camper van on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed tattoo of a classic Volkswagen camper van, shown side on and front on across two close-up photographs of the upper thigh. The van is covered in stickers, badges, a peace sign and a yin yang symbol, with soft shading across the bodywork, windows and wheel. The image is in black and grey, with the van centred against a plain skin background.

Realism Thigh Badge Peace sign Yin yang Wheel Window

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

By the time the dust wall stood up over the ridge, I had been working at a sticker on the side door for an hour, trying to lift the edge of a ferry port that no longer existed. Maud did not care about ferry ports. She was a Type 2 from before the salt came up the valley, and my grandad used to say she would outlast us all, tapping the rust on her sill with his boot as if to prove it.

Keep reading

The stickers were the only map she had left. A faded surf shop from a coast that was now seabed, a band whose name had gone with their last record, and a row of chrome badges that caught the light like teeth. On the back panel sat the peace sign, chipped at one corner, and beside it the yin and yang, half scoured by sand but still two halves that wanted each other. Tobiah Quill from Harrow Dam had walked round her twice with his clean collar and his clipboard, offering twelve jerricans of water and a working battery for the lot.

I said yes, because the children at the dam had been drinking from a cistern the colour of stewed tea. But I wanted the symbols. I took my knife to the yin and yang first, working the rivets loose, then the peace sign, then the VW badge from the bonnet, which came away with a sound like a held breath. Quill watched me pocket them and didn't ask. He only wanted the van to drive.

He pulled out at dawn with the window down and her bodywork bare in patches, pale squares where the badges had sat for forty years. I stood on the ridge with the water and the small hard weight of the badges in my palm. Below, the engine coughed twice and caught, and the dust closed over the road like a page turning.