Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Abstract watercolour swoosh on shoulder
Shoulder · Mixed · Photo
The tattoo sits on the shoulder and top of the upper chest, showing a black circle with a white centre and a sweeping black wave-like line. Bold black linework is softened by purple, blue and pink washes that fade out at the edges. The close crop shows the shoulder against a dark background and a black strap top.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Sit closer, you lot, the rain won't reach under this awning if you keep your elbows in. You want the story of Mrs Okonedo's ink stall, the one that stood between the fishmongers and the man who sold cheap umbrellas, back when the market was still cobbles and not the glass hall it is now.
Keep reading
Every morning she ground her sumi stick on a stone worn to a dip, and every morning she drew one circle in a single breath. If the brush lifted, the circle stayed open, and she threw that one into the gutter. Her neighbours laughed. Who needs a perfect ring to sell a bottle of ink? But the rain that autumn came sideways off the estuary, and it ran purple from the dye-woman's cloth into the square, blue from the bolts of silk, pink from the sugar-glazed buns. Everything bled into everything.
Then the boy came. He had a wave in him, he said, a long dark wave that wanted out, and he couldn't draw it without it breaking. She watched him try for three days. On the fourth she handed him the brush and said, do not lift until the water tells you to.
He drew it across the wet paper in one pass, and where the colours touched the edges softened and let go. She did not close her circle that day. She set it beside his wave, a little open at the top, like a door left ajar for the weather.
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