Two black and grey fine line tattoos on forearms: a row of painting tools including brushes and palette knives on the left, and a chef's hat, apron, knife, spatula, ladle and whisk on the right.

Art tools and kitchen utensils on forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The left image shows a row of painting tools, including a palette knife, pencils, several paintbrushes of different sizes and a large flat brush, drawn in fine black outline across the forearm. The right image shows kitchen utensils, a knife, spatula, ladle and whisk, arranged around a chef's hat and apron in the same delicate linework. Both pieces use black ink and grey shading on skin, with the tools spaced evenly along the length of the arm.

Fine line Forearm Paintbrush Pencil Knife

Find an artist for this

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

Dear Tom, the fish van came late again, so I've propped the back door with your old palette knife and left the radio on low, and I'm writing this at the pass with a tea going cold beside me. You'll laugh, but I finally cleared the bottom drawer. Forty-one years of spatulas and whisks, and tucked under them, wrapped in a tea towel that still smelled of your dad's cigarettes, was the flat brush you left behind when you went off to art school.

Keep reading

I didn't throw it out. I hung the knives on the magnet strip above the grill, put the ladle on its hook, and laid the brush across the cutting board like a sleeping cat. It's gone eleven on a Tuesday, Leeds has gone quiet outside, and the only light is the extractor fan and the orange glow of the salamander. I kept thinking about the night you painted the back room with the green we'd bought for the window frames, how Mrs Okafor came in for her cod and stood staring at the stripes as if they were a sunset she'd been promised.

Your letter came in March, the one with the Hull gallery postmark. I read it three times standing up. You said the palette knife still catches your thumb on the good days. I told the lads at the sink you'd finally made it, and Dev said you'd better send a photo, so I'm enclosing the new whisk I bought, which is terrible, and a picture of the back wall, which is not.

The brush is still on the board. I haven't decided whether to take it home or leave it for the morning crew, who will bin it without asking. Write back and tell me which tool you'd reach for if you had to cook your way out of a bad week. I know mine, and it isn't the one you'd expect.