Abstract brushstroke tattoo in black and teal blue with small splatters, on the forearm of a person wearing a checked shirt.

Abstract brushstroke tattoo on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A loose abstract design of bold brushstrokes sits on the forearm against a plain white background. Thick black strokes cross over sweeping teal and blue marks, with fine black speckles and small splashes spreading around the edges. The composition is off-centre and the image is well lit, showing the strokes clearly.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Edwin, the ink finally came. Brother Hilary sent the last of the lamp-black from Lindisfarne by carrier, wrapped in wool, and it is the good stuff, thick enough to stand on the nib. I have been trying it on scrap vellum all week instead of the psalter, which Prior Oswy would call idleness if he were not too busy counting eels.

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Yesterday the Abbot came into the scriptorium while I was thinking about the blue. You remember the woad vat behind the dye-house, how the water turns the colour of a bruise and then of a kingfisher's back when the light falls through it. I dipped a flat brush in it and dragged it down the margin of Mark, meaning only to test it. The stroke swept out like a bird lifting off the water. Then I went back in with the black, quick and rough, the way you taught me to finish a capital before the ink dries. Flecks flew from the brush when I flicked it, and one landed on the Abbot's sleeve.

He did not shout. He looked at the margin for a long time, then at the spatter on his cuff, and said only that wool washes. I expected to be sent to the fields for a month. Instead he asked me to finish the page.

So the bird is still there, beside the words of Mark, where no one will read it but God and whoever scrapes the vellum after me. I have decided it is a heron, though Brother Col says a swallow and Brother Dunstan says a smudge. Come at Lammas and see it for yourself. Bring the good penknife. Yours in Christ, Tobias.

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