Colourful watercolour-style light bulb tattoo with a red paper boat inside and black ink splatters around it, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Light bulb with paper boat on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A light bulb fills the centre of the forearm, with a red origami paper boat sitting inside the glass. The bulb is shaded in soft orange, red and blue washes with a darker, smoky tone at the top, and its metal screw base is rendered in grey. Loose black ink splatters and drips surround the bulb across the arm, and the person's white t-shirt and jeans are visible at the left edge.

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

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The electrician came up from Hythe on Tuesday and swore at our hall bulb until Mum threatened him with the kettle. He says the filament has gone grey in the middle, like a cloud that won't clear, and he handed me the old one as if it were a sweet. I keep it on the windowsill now. Every evening I hold it up to the lamp in the yard and watch the orange come up at the top where the glass is warmest.

I have been folding things again. Your last letter came with the stamp soaked through, so I cut the good paper off the back of the rent book and made a boat, the way Dad taught us on the step before the war. It sits in the bulb where the sky should be, red as a pillar box, and it doesn't sink. I know it's daft. The shop on Harbour Street sells proper paper for threepence, but I wanted something that had been to the sea and come back.

Mrs Oakes next door says the lights along the front will be switched off for the regatta, so the boats will have to find their way by the moon. I told her you'd manage. You always did find the harbour in the dark, even when you'd no business being out.

Write when the ship docks. Bring the blue glass from Rotterdam if they let you ashore, and I'll show you what the bulb does when there's enough current left for the blue to come up under the red.

Love, Nell