Abstract brushstroke tattoo on the forearm in black with red, yellow and blue streaks, with small script lettering near the wrist.

Painterly brushstroke tattoo on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm carries a large abstract tattoo of black, ragged brushstroke-like shapes running diagonally across the skin. Streaks of red, yellow and blue sit within the black, and small fine script lettering is placed near the wrist. The photograph is taken at close range against a plain pale wall, with the subject's torso and waistband visible at the left edge.

Forearm Brushstroke Abstract Script Lettering

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

The storm cloth had to be finished by Thursday, and Walter Pell would not let me lay a brush on it until I had stopped holding my breath. 'Dry brush,' he said, tapping the frame with his knuckle. 'Drag it like you're pulling a wet coat off a hook.' The Hull Empress had lost its sea scene to a fire years before, and now the new one was going up behind a touring Tempest with nothing but a bucket of lamp black and three tins of colour to make it weather.

Keep reading

I asked him why the streaks were red and yellow and blue, when the sea in the play was supposed to be grey. He wiped his hands on a rag and looked at the cloth as if it had insulted him. 'Nobody in the stalls looks at the sea,' he said. 'They look at where the light goes across it. Red where the lightning will catch the edge. Yellow for the lamp in the wings. Blue where the wind is cold enough to hurt.' So I dragged the black on in long ragged sweeps, let the brush break up at the ends, and filled the gaps with colour the way he showed me, quick and without thinking.

We worked until the cleaners came in at six, and the cloth hung between us like a wet sail while we stood back and argued about the blue. Walter said it was too polite. I said it was perfect. He laughed, the first time I had heard him do it, and went off to find his tea without another word about it.

He died the winter after. The flats went to the tip with the rest of the old scenery, but he had pressed a rag into my hand that first night, stiff with black and one thread of vermilion, and I keep it folded in the back of my wallet where nobody thinks to look.