Painterly brushstroke tattoo in red, purple, orange and black sweeping across the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Brushstroke tattoo on the upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows several bold, curving brushstrokes that look like paint swept across the skin, with a red stroke at the top and lower edge and purple and orange strokes between them. Black ink outlines and shadows the strokes, giving them a loose, energetic finish. The colour ink dominates the composition, which is photographed close up on the upper arm against a plain background.

Upper arm Brushstroke Abstract Swirl

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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

Sit closer, the lamp is only so bright. You want the story of Old Brannock's brush, the one he used on the cliffs above Hallow Cove, because that brush is why the sea has the colours it has.

Keep reading

Brannock was a painter who came over on the ferry with one trunk, a jar of turpentine and a brush worn down to six hairs. Nobody on Scarrow wanted a painter. We had boats and nets and the weather, and a man who tried to paint the weather looked a fool. But he took the empty barn above the quay and painted anyway, and when the winter storms came he went out on the headland with his arm stretched wide and swept the brush across the air, the way you'd wipe a slate clean with your sleeve.

Mind, the colours came off the sky that night. Red from the sunset that bled over the gorse, purple from the bruise of the cloud bank, orange from the last lamp in Mary Teague's kitchen window. Black was the soot of the peat fires, and he laid it along the edges so the colours would hold their shape. Three strokes, and the wind dropped. The fishing fleet came home that week with full holds, and not one boat was lost.

Now here is the part the mainlanders don't believe. Brannock carried one stroke off the island with him when he left. The gulls say he took it under his sleeve, a red streak pulled like a flag from the top of the cliff down to the bottom of the bay. If you ever see the sea go red and purple at once, lift your hand as the ferry passes. He'll be watching, and he will still owe us a fourth stroke.