Realism style tattoo of four coloured planets stacked down the inner forearm against a teal and red nebula with small stars.

Planets and nebula on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A stack of four planets runs down the forearm, from a blue and orange Earth-like globe near the elbow to a small blue planet near the wrist. The planets are shaded with soft gradients and surface detail, set against a background of teal, red and blue nebula clouds and scattered stars. Colour ink dominates, and the composition follows the length of the arm.

Realism Forearm Planet Space Nebula Star Earth

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, before the sausage rolls go cold. Yes, Gary, I can see you reaching for the Bakewell. Right. This is about the mobile that hung over Room Nine, the one Mr Haddow strung up with fishing line in the autumn of 1979.

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He painted the planets himself with a sponge and far too much orange. The top one was our Earth, blue and smudged with cloud, and it hung nearest the door so the first thing you saw coming in was home. Beneath it turned the rust-coloured one, then a pale yellow ball Haddow swore was Jupiter though it looked more like a bruised egg. At the very bottom dangled a small blue planet that spun whenever somebody opened the window. Nobody ever chose that one. It was the one you pointed at when you didn't know the answer.

Then came the spring the fishing line snapped. Dennis Pym swore blind it was the wind. By lunchtime the little blue planet was in his blazer pocket, and nobody saw him take it except Maureen Reilly, who kept quiet for forty-odd years and is, as you can all see, now eyeing the trifle.

So here's my question, Dennis. Don't tell me it's in a drawer. Haddow kept the other three in a shoebox until the day he retired, and he wrote every child's name on the underside of the Earth in biro. I've wondered all evening whether you ever meant to give it back. Go on. Reach into that coat. I'll wait.