Colour tattoo of a light bulb holding a red origami paper boat, surrounded by black ink splatters, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Light bulb with paper boat on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A light bulb with a silver screw base sits at the centre of the forearm, with a red origami paper boat inside a glowing orange and blue glass. Soft watercolour-style blends of orange, red and blue shade the bulb, while loose black ink splatters and thin drips spread across the surrounding skin. The design is centred on the forearm against a plain background.

Forearm Light bulb Paper boat Origami Ink splatter

Find an artist for this

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

Mags Tennant had kept the lamp at Scarrow Point for thirty-one winters, and in all that time the sea had never once asked her for a favour. So when the boy came up the path in the rain, holding a square of red paper against his chest, she assumed he had lost his way.

Keep reading

He wanted the light put out for an hour. His father's boat had gone past the skerries at dusk, he said, and he had folded a boat of his own to send after it. Mags told him the lamp could not be dimmed, not for a minute, not for a child. The light was the light. Then she saw that he had tucked a little glass bulb inside the paper hull, the sort the chandler sold for Christmas trees, and the glass was already glowing orange where it touched the fold.

She went up the iron stairs with him behind her. At the top she lifted the great lens's spare housing from the drawer, fitted the boy's glowing bulb into it, and turned the main lamp down to a blue ember. Out past the rocks a small red shape bobbed in the dark, turned once, and steadied. It was not a light anyone would have chosen to follow, but it was the only one out there.

The boy's father rowed in an hour later, cold to the bone, with a net of mackerel and a story about being blown off course. The boy said nothing about the paper boat. Mags kept the spare bulb in the drawer after that, and each winter, when the sky went the colour of slate, she took it out and set it on the sill facing the water.