Colour tattoo of a swirling purple, orange and teal galaxy with star highlights covering the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Galaxy nebula sleeve on upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm and part of the shoulder with a swirling galaxy or nebula. Soft purple, orange, blue and teal tones blend into one another, with pale star-like highlights scattered across the design. The painted, blended shading gives the piece depth, and the swirls wrap around the curve of the arm.

Upper arm Shoulder Galaxy Nebula Star Swirl Space

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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

The herring boats had gone out before first light, and when they came back at noon the nets sat heavy in a way that had nothing to do with fish. Maud Pennick waded in to free them. Tangled in the mesh were pieces of sky: a whorl of violet, a smear of orange like a banked fire, and a cold blue that ran wet through her fingers. Pale stars sat in the knots like grains of salt.

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Her father wanted them thrown back. The harbourmaster wanted them sold to the chapel for its windows. Maud carried the pieces up the steep lane to the net loft instead and laid them across the drying frames, where the light off the water came through and turned the room the colour of a bruise that is healing. She sewed the edges together all winter with waxed thread, making a sleeve of sailcloth that wrapped the sky around her arm, because sewing was the only thing she knew how to hold together.

When the spring tides came, the old women said the sea would take back what it was owed. It rose over the harbour wall in the dark and rattled every shutter in Scarrow Row. Maud went down to the quay with the sleeve over her shoulder and stood at the edge of the water. She did not throw it in. The swirls lifted off the cloth and spun out across the bay, and each star settled on a mast until every boat in the harbour glittered.

In the morning the fishermen hauled up their nets and found only ordinary herring, silver and still. Maud's sleeve hung empty on the mooring post, its stitches still warm to the touch.