Black and grey pencil drawing of a Japanese style peony and scroll sleeve tattoo design for the upper arm, shown from back, side and front.

Peony and scroll sleeve design, three views

Japanese · Upper arm · Black and grey · Flash

Three pencil drawings show the same full arm sleeve design from the back, side and front, with the elbow marked on the side view. The design combines large peony blooms, layered leaves, swirling scrollwork and cloud shapes. The shading is soft grey with dark outlines, and the drawings sit on a plain white background.

Japanese Upper arm Peony Flower Leaves Scrollwork Cloud Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the big top smells of wet canvas and generator oil, and Mr Okonjo has finally let me paint the front of the Peony Wheel booth. He wanted gold scrollwork around the door and I gave him clouds instead, the little curled ones you taught me to draw off the kitchen tiles. He said the crowd wants something they can pay for. I told him the crowd pays for what they can't stop looking at.

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Four nights in Kettering and the rain has not stopped once. Every morning I scrape the mud off my brushes and do the flowers again, because the first ones came out too pale and nobody stops for pale. The big blooms take the longest. You have to layer the petals dark at the centre and let the white show at the edge, then go back with the thinnest line you own. Mrs Pryce from the candy stall asked if they were real. I said they were the sort that don't wilt.

Last night a boy of about nine stood in front of the board with a bag of toffee apples and asked why the flowers were grey. I didn't have an answer that wasn't about money, so I told him they were waiting for the lights to come on. He nodded as if that made sense and wandered off towards the dodgems. This morning I found someone had switched on the generator, and the bulbs were burning behind the painted petals, so the whole front glowed through the paint as though it had been lit from inside.

I don't know whether Mr Okonjo noticed. He's paying me for another month. I think I'll stay with the fair until the cold sets in, then come home with the brushes and a fistful of wages and paint the kitchen tiles properly for once. Love, Tom