Black brushstroke tattoo with a teal streak and small ink dots on a woman's shoulder, with a light grey top worn off the shoulder.

Abstract brushstroke shoulder tattoo

Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of a loose, abstract tattoo across the top of a shoulder and upper chest, made of sweeping black strokes that taper to fine points. A single teal streak runs through the upper strokes, and small dots and flicks of ink scatter toward the front of the shoulder. The background is a pale wall and a light grey top with a faded printed design, and the composition crops the face out of frame.

Shoulder Brushstroke Abstract Splatter Dot

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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 tells you a fascia is mostly waiting. I had the ladder against the shutter of the closed launderette on Cable Street at half past one, the pavement still wet from a shower that had come and gone, and a pot of black enamel thinned with turpentine until it ran like weak tea. Every letter wants one stroke. Go back into it and the line goes dead, and you can see the dead bit from across the road.

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Ruth taught me that. She was the signwriter who took me on when I was nineteen and couldn't tell a Didone from a Clarendon, and she kept a tin of teal on the bench that she never let anyone else open. It was the colour of the sea wall at Margate in the mornings. When I asked what it was for, she said every sign needs one thing in it that doesn't belong, or people walk past it without seeing it. Then she painted a single flick through the middle of a dentist's name and went home.

The street was quiet except for a night bus sighing at the stop and a cat working through the bins. I loaded the brush, let the hand take the weight the way she'd shown me, and drew the long sweep that would become the top of the L. The black came off clean. Then the teal, a thin pull that caught the streetlamp and seemed to lift off the metal. A few specks sprayed from the tip onto my sleeve, and I left them where they fell, because she'd always said the marks you can't control are the ones people remember.

By six the launderette had a new name curling across its shutter, and the teal streak ran underneath it like something startled and about to take off. Ruth came past on her bike, slowed, looked up for a long time, and rang her bell twice. That was the whole review. I still think about it more than any compliment I've been paid.