Blue tribal tattoo of swirling curves and a symmetrical central motif running along a forearm, on a person wearing a white top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blue tribal design on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A bold blue tribal design made of flowing curves, spirals and a symmetrical central motif. The linework is solid and filled areas of blue ink give it a strong graphic look. The tattoo runs up the forearm towards the elbow against a dark background, with a white sleeve at the edge of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

Keep reading

The vat in the back shed has finally woken up. You left it sulking all through March, and I nearly poured the lot down the drain, but this morning there was a skin on it, copper-bronze and shining like a beetle's back. When I lifted the first cotton out it came up green as pond weed. You know what that means. Give it ten minutes in the air and the green goes blue, the way a bruise turns, only kinder.

I kept thinking of your sketches while I worked. You drew everything in curls, spirals that started at the edge of a page and wound inwards until the pencil nearly tore the paper. Mr Haworth said they looked like swirls in the beck after rain, and I wanted to tell him they were not swirls at all but the way water remembers a stone. The one you gave me last year, with the face in the middle made of little dots and a pair of wide eyes, is pinned above the sink. Every time I stir the vat I look up and it looks back at me, unimpressed.

Come home for the Whit fair. Bring the pencils. I have forty yards of calico soaking and I need someone to hold the other end while it dries on the line, because the wind off the moor has been unkind and I am not as young as my arms believe.

Yours in blue, Nan

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