Colour realism tattoo of a palm tree sunset over the sea, with a starry night sky and pale moons above, covering the upper arm and shoulder.

Palm tree sunset and starry sky on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a sunset over calm water, with black silhouetted palm trees on the left and right and a glowing sun near the horizon. Above the orange and red clouds, a dark blue starry sky holds small white stars and two large pale round shapes. The shading is smooth and blended, with soft gradients in the sky and reflections on the water, and the colours run from deep blue through red and orange.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Palm tree Sunset Sea Star Night sky Cloud Moon Sun

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okonedo wanted the moons bigger. She stood at the bottom of the scaffold with her cardigan buttoned wrong and told me so twice, once for me and once for the man from the council, who had come about the fire door and stayed to watch. The wall was the back of the Esplanade Hotel's car park, forty feet of render facing the harbour, and she had paid for a sunset because her husband had proposed under one in Funchal in 1971 and had never let her forget it.

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I had three days and a palette of six reds, which I mixed until they came close to the colour of the chip-shop lamps at dusk. The palms went on first, in black thinned with turps until it ran like ink in water. The sea was the hard part. Every stroke of orange I laid across the water came out as a stripe of light, and by the second afternoon the gulls had lined up on the parapet to watch me lose my temper with it.

On the last morning I did the sky. I dragged blue down from the top corner, nearly black, and flicked white across it with an old toothbrush until it looked like a fishing net full of lights. Then I stood back and saw that the two moons I'd painted were too small, one tucked against the gutter like a ball someone had left behind.

Mrs Okonedo came out with a flask and looked up for a long time. "Leave them," she said. "He always said the first one was the only one that mattered." I didn't ask who he meant. The paint was dry by six, and from the harbour, if you squinted, the sun looked as if it were setting into the sea a second time.