Fine line tattoo of three paper planes with blue watercolour wash and dashed flight paths, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Paper planes with blue wash on a back

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

Three black outlined paper planes sit across the upper back, linked by dashed flight lines that curl across the skin. Thin black linework forms the planes and paths, while soft blue watercolour-style washes sit behind and beneath the planes, with one wash dripping at the lower right. The composition is loose and scattered, with the planes arranged diagonally across the shoulder blade area.

Fine line Back Paper plane Dashed line Watercolour

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

Sit closer, the fire is low and the story is long. This is about the planes that crossed the river at Hallow Ford, the year the bridge was closed and the two towns stopped speaking.

Keep reading

Marit lived on the north bank, in the house above the dye works, and her cousin Tobias lived on the south bank, where the water ran blue from the vats every morning. Nobody could cross. The guards at the bridge had orders, and orders in those days weighed more than stone. So Marit tore the back pages from her father's ledger, folded them into planes, and wrote small things on their wings: the price of bread, the name of her dog, a question about whether the swallows had come back.

She threw them from the top of the weir. Most dropped into the water and went grey. But one caught the wind off the sluice and turned, and then another, and by the first frost there were a dozen crossing the gap in lines that curled and doubled back like someone thinking aloud. Tobias ran along the far bank to catch them. He wrote his answers on the same paper, and the planes came home again.

Then came the autumn the dye vats cracked. A blue tide poured into the river, and a plane Marit had sent out soaked through and sank, the ink on its wing spreading like a bruise. Tobias fished it out with a net and dried it on the stove. Underneath her words he wrote, in careful capitals, IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO LAND SOMEWHERE. Then he folded it again and let it go, and it flew straight over the bridge while the guards were looking the other way.

That is how I know the river remembers where the planes went. Now pass the bottle, and mind the blue on your fingers.