Black and grey realism tattoo of a tiger walking towards the viewer with bamboo leaves, covering the whole of a person's back.

Walking tiger and bamboo across a full back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large tiger strides towards the viewer, its head held forward with a fixed gaze, and its large paw planted at the bottom of the composition. Shading is smooth and fine-grained in the fur, with bold dark stripes contrasting against lighter grey areas, while dark bamboo stalks and leaves frame the figure on both sides. The design fills the entire back in black and grey ink, with the tiger's body curving diagonally across the upper half.

Realism Botanical Back Tiger Leaves Paw Stripe Big cat

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Second week out from Keelung, the cook still wouldn't go into the forward store after dark. Ah Fat said the bamboo on the bulkhead had grown. Nobody believed him, but Teodor measured it with a knotted length of marline and found the tip of the stalk had crept a finger's width past the last rivet of the frame.

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The painting had been there since the ship was built in a Tyneside yard by men who never asked what the Chinese owner wanted on the wall. A tiger walked out of the green leaves with one forepaw raised, head low, looking at whoever stood in the doorway. Old Halloran, the bosun, said it was the handsomest cat he had seen on any ship and the only one that never needed feeding.

On the ninth night the glass dropped and the Atlantic came up over the rail like a wall. Teodor was lashing hatch tarpaulins when the lamp in the store swung and he saw, for one heartbeat, that the tiger's paw was no longer on the plaster. It was on the deck boards, pressing, the way a cat presses a mat before it lies down.

He did not run. He had been raised on a farm near Bodmin where his grandmother said you bow to whatever walks through your house. He pressed his palm flat on the wet wood, said the words she had taught him, and felt the ship rise and settle under him as if a great animal had turned over in its sleep.

When they reached Liverpool the bulkhead was bare plaster, and the bamboo leaves lay scattered across the store floor like ash, dry and whole.