Colour realism full sleeve tattoo of planets, swirling galaxies and nebula clouds covering a person's shoulder, upper arm and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Galaxy and planets full arm sleeve

Realism · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

Three photographs show a full arm sleeve from shoulder to wrist, filled with planets, a ringed planet, swirling spiral galaxies and clouds of nebula. The shading is soft and painterly, with smooth gradients that give the planets volume and a glowing, cosmic depth. Blues, teals, oranges and yellows dominate the colour palette, and the planets are arranged so that they wrap around the arm.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Planet Galaxy Nebula Space Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The orrery had been in the loft since Grandad died, wrapped in a bath towel and smelling of mothballs and machine oil. Nell got it down on a Saturday in February because the gutters were full of snow and she needed somewhere to be that wasn't the kitchen table, where her mum kept going quiet over the bills.

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Inside, the brass arms had gone stiff. Someone, probably Grandad himself, had painted each planet by hand with enamel that had cracked into little continents. The big ringed one had lost a sliver of its ring, a crescent of thin gold no wider than a fingernail, and the card sleeve said in faded biro: NELL, FOR WHEN YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. She didn't know what that meant yet.

She worked through the afternoon with a jar of warm water, a tin of Brasso and a tube of superglue from the junk drawer, turning the crank slowly so the cotton-wool nebula glued to the base turned with it. The glue set crooked. The ring sat a fraction off its angle, which she decided was fine, because Saturn had never been perfectly level either, according to the library book she had not finished.

By dark the planets were wrapped round the lampshade in the front window, orange and teal and bruised blue, throwing their small shadows across the snow on the path. Her mum came to the doorway with a mug of tea and stopped. Nell cranked the arm once more and set her finger on the hot orange one. 'That's the one Grandad said was Mars,' she said. 'It isn't. It's the one that's on fire.'