Watercolour-style tattoo of a ballerina in a white tutu with raised arms and blue and pink washes, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ballerina watercolour tattoo on forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a ballerina in a white tutu with arms raised overhead and one leg extended on pointe. Her outline is drawn in fine blue and red lines, with the figure left mostly unfilled so the skin shows through. Loose blue, pink, red and orange washes and splatters sit behind and around her, giving a painterly watercolour effect.

Forearm Dancer Watercolour splashes

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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

Dear Nell, the washes have gone off in the tin again, and Mr Okonedo blames the damp in the loft, though I suspect he simply enjoys watching me scrape the saucers with a palette knife. The Garnier has put me on the second-act backcloth, a sky that must read as dusk over the harbour, so I have been floating pale cobalt into a wet ground and letting it bleed toward rose at the hem. It looks like nothing until the lamps are lit, and then it looks like weather.

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The dancer who stays behind after rehearsal is called Mirela, though everyone calls her Mira when Madame is out of earshot. Most nights she practises her arms against the cold brick by the stage door, lifting both hands over her head and holding them there until they tremble, the way Madame taught her when she was twelve. Last Thursday I was flicking carmine off my brush onto the sky, and a drop landed on the pale ground beside her. She laughed and said I had ruined it. I said it was the best thing I had done all month, and she said it was a cheek to call a splash a painting.

Madame came in on Friday with a lamp and a list of faults. The splatter had to go, she said, and the sky was too loud for a ballet. I dipped my brush in the tin and did as I was told with everything except the one red fleck near the wings, which I left alone. It is still there, beside the pink ribbon I painted for Mirela's shoe, and when you visit in March you can sit in the gallery and find it before anyone else does. Write back soon, and tell Father I have eaten.