Small colourful watercolour-style tattoo of a city skyline with a yellow junk boat on the water, placed on the inside of a forearm.

Harbour skyline and junk boat on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a cluster of tall towers and low buildings above a yellow junk boat with red sails, sitting on blue water. The linework is soft and loose, with washes of purple, pink, orange and blue blending into one another. It sits on the forearm against a red background, with small pink dots scattered above the skyline.

Forearm Skyline City Building Boat Water Sea Sail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The ferry was late again, so I sat on the bench at the pier with my sketchbook on my knee and watched the junk Lucky Dove come in under its red sails. You will laugh, but the old boatman, Ho, lifted his hand to me as if I were somebody's aunt. I did not wave back. I was too busy trying to catch the pink of the sails before the light went off the water.

I have been trying to paint the towers the way your grandfather did, with the purple washes running down into the harbour so you cannot tell where the glass stops and the sea begins. Every time I get close, a gust turns the page or my water jar tips over. Yesterday I had it nearly right and then dropped my good brush over the railing. Mr Choi from the kiosk fished it out with a crab-pot net and would not take a penny for it.

This morning Ho came up the pier with a paper lantern rolled in a canvas sleeve. He said his boat had been in too many photographs and wanted a painting with the sails in it instead. He said the lantern was for the painting, to hang at the window so the boats could find the right house.

I have hung it at my window now, and it turns slowly in the draught from the sea. When the picture is finished I will fold it inside the lantern's paper and post it to you, so you can unroll the skyline and the yellow hull together. The pink dots will still be a little damp, so mind your thumbs.

Love, Aunt Pim