Colour tattoo of a palm tree on a forearm, set against a blue watercolour-style sky with sea and sand at the base.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Palm tree and blue sky on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A single palm tree leans slightly to the right, its trunk shaded in grey and brown and its fronds in several greens. Behind it, soft blue washes suggest clouds or sky, and a band of blue sea and a strip of sand sit at the bottom. The tree is centred on the forearm, with the shading giving it depth while the background fades into lighter edges.

Realism Forearm Palm tree Sea Sky Cloud Sand Beach

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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

Dear Ruth, the tree is still leaning. I went down to the shore this morning with the tide out and stood where the sand goes grey under the wet, and looked at it the way you told me to, as if it had an opinion about the wind. It does. It leans east, towards the sea, like a man who has heard a rumour from across the water and wants to check it himself.

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The council wanted it cut down after the winter gales. Mr Talbot from the harbour office came with a saw and a clipboard, and I told him the tree was older than the breakwater, which was a lie, but he had no way of knowing that. He stood under it with his hands in his coat and said it would fall on the Pegler boy's boat shed one day, and I said then the Pegler boy would have to build a better shed. He laughed. Then he went away and didn't come back.

Here is the thing I meant to tell you. Last week I painted the sky behind it. Nobody asked me to. I took the blue from the tin you left in the scullery, the one you said was for the lifeboat and never used, and I worked it in soft washes on the whitewashed wall while the sun came round. By evening there were clouds where there had been plaster, and the palm stood in front of them as if it had been there all along and we had only just noticed.

It was your idea, the palm. You said anyone can paint a sea. But you can't make a thing lean without knowing which way it wants to go, and I think I finally know which way that is.