Colour tattoo of a loose, painterly swirl with blue, yellow, orange and green brushstrokes around an open circle, on the inner forearm.

Abstract colour swirl on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm, cropped below the shoulder and above the wrist, with a tattoo of a swirling abstract design. A ring in yellow and orange sits at the centre, surrounded by blue, green and red brushstroke shapes that sweep outwards and taper into dots. The soft, watercolour-like shading and bright palette stand out against the pale skin, with a plain white background.

Forearm Swirl Circle Brushstroke Abstract Splash

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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

The pass closed at noon, and by four the snow had swallowed the lower windows of the Hollin Gate, so the only light in the taproom came from the stove and the brass lamp you had bought off a carter for two shillings. Mrs Asha Teague set a plate of mutton beside your paint box without asking, and looked at the ochre smeared across your knuckles the way people look at a stain they have decided to forgive.

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You had come up to paint the valley before the thaw, but the valley had gone white and blank, a sheet nobody could read. So you painted the inside of the inn instead: the stove door, the copper kettle, the thin blade of wind slipping under the shutter. On the third night the blizzard came round the chimney in a long turning spiral, and you stood with a wet brush and tried to catch its shape before it dissolved.

Mrs Teague's boy, Dov, who was seven and had not said a word to you since the cart arrived, climbed onto the bench and pointed at the window. Through a gap in the frost the sun had come up for a minute, low and orange, with the snow spinning round it in blue ribbons. He took your brush without asking, drew a ring in the condensation on the glass, then breathed on it and smeared the edges into streaks.

By morning the pass was open and the ring had run to nothing, but you still had the page. Blue cut across the orange like wind across a lamp, and at the bottom sat a single green drop where the boy had let the brush fall. You packed the box, paid for the mutton, and left the sheet pinned under the kettle, where the heat would keep it dry for whoever came up next.