Red koi & peonies

I made this tattoo on a southafrican guy the fall 2006. I tried the realistic approach with the shading of the scales "inverted" as opposed to the more common way to make them if you color the scales one by one. I thought, before meeting the guy in person that it was supposed to be bigger all the way down to the elbow but I was mistaken so we did the same tattoo, only smaller.
It worked out just fine but all of us like them as big as possible dont we.