Colour tattoo of a leaping dancer silhouette with blue and green wash shading, on the lower leg above the ankle.

Dancer silhouette in blue and green wash on a lower leg

Calf · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a dancer in a leaping pose, with the figure's head, raised arm and extended leg in solid black and the body filled with soft blue and teal shading. The edges bleed and fade into the skin, giving a loose, painterly look with a few drips trailing down toward the ankle. The figure fills the centre of the frame against smooth, slightly glossy skin, with plastic sheeting visible in the background.

Calf Dancer Silhouette Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind took the banner off the top of the Big Top rail at four in the morning, and by the time Ada Quinn reached the field the canvas lay in the mud like a dropped sail. Mr Penhale stood over it with a torch and his hat in his hands. "Dancing girl," he said. "Fourteen feet of her. Can you have her up by seven?"

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Ada spread the canvas across two trestles in the paint wagon and worked out what could be saved. The figure had torn across the hip and the back leg had gone to nothing, but the head and the raised arm were still sharp. She mixed black for the silhouette, then loaded a big brush with water and thinned teal and cobalt, letting them bleed into the weave so the body softened into the light behind it. Where the paint pooled she let it run, the way her father had taught her to let the clouds drip on fairground boards when she was small. "Too messy," Penhale said, coming back with two teas. "Looks like she's melting."

Lou came in from the high wire with her hair still wet and stood a long time in front of the canvas. She had the same lean as the figure, the same reach toward something above her. "That's it," she said. "That's the bit before you let go." Ada looked at the thin trail of colour running down toward the bottom edge and didn't correct it.

By seven the banner hung across the front of the booth, stiff and bright in the early sun. Nobody asked about the ragged hip. A child in a yellow mac pointed at the figure, then at the wire above the ground, and followed the drips down the poles to where the grass was still wet from the night. Ada left the paint to dry where it had fallen.