Colourful foliage and puzzle piece tattoo sleeve on a forearm resting against an acoustic guitar.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Foliage sleeve on a forearm resting on a guitar

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm and upper arm rest against the body of an acoustic guitar, covered in a tattoo sleeve. The design includes green leaves and foliage, a small puzzle piece, and orange and dark striped shading across the arm. Colour ink sits alongside grey and black shading, with a soft, warm-toned background.

Forearm Leaves Foliage Puzzle piece Stripe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fiddle-maker's daughter had promised the village she would bring the first cut of the spring rain before Michaelmas, and by the middle of September the orchard behind Hollin Farm had gone the colour of old brass. Nobody had told the ivy. It had crept over the wall of the bothy, through the broken slates, and now it was reaching for the open window where her father's guitar leaned against the sill, its bright spruce top scratched with a small wooden cross he had carved the winter her mother died.

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She went out with a jar of linseed oil and a rag and found the ivy already wrapped around the tuning pegs. The leaves were stripy at the edges, orange where the frost had caught them and dark green where they were still drinking. A puzzle of bark lay in the gutter, pieces that fitted together only if you turned them three times. She fitted two of them, then gave up, and sat on the step with the guitar across her knees.

The sun came round the chestnut at half past five and laid a warm stripe across the yard. Her father had always said a good instrument should be played until it forgot the man who made it. She put the rag down, strummed one open string, and let the sound bloom out over the wall toward the village, where the lamps were being lit one by one. The ivy loosened its grip on the window. By dawn the bothy door stood open, and the leaves had turned to face the road.