Colour pop art comic style full sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and forearm, showing a blonde woman with a hand raised to her mouth, a speech bubble and a red explosion.

Pop art comic full sleeve with woman and explosion

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The sleeve shows a blonde woman with closed eyes and a hand raised to her lips, drawn with bold black outlines and red halftone dots. A speech bubble with small text, a red and yellow explosion marked BAM, and a turquoise wave pattern fill the surrounding space. The colours are bright and flat, with shading built from dot patterns, and the design wraps around the full arm in two photographs.

Upper arm Forearm Woman Speech bubble Hand Wave Blonde hair

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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

You pin the page to the lightbox on the twelfth floor of Hadleigh House, the one with the lift that only goes up when it feels like it. Outside the window the wind has been shoving the turquoise sky around since Tuesday, and the tea you made has gone cold beside the bottle of Tippex. Mrs Okafor from flat 4C has left a note under your door asking whether the drilling is you. It isn't. It is the sound of the estate being knocked down one flat at a time, and you are the only one still up here drawing comics about it.

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Dev brought the Ben-Day dot screen over from the print shop in Walthamstow, a sheet of acetate thinner than a biscuit. You lay it over the face you have drawn: a woman with her eyes shut and one finger pressed to her lips, her hair thrown up in a yellow wave. Every dot is a decision. Too coarse and she looks like a newspaper photo; too fine and the page swallows her. You work until your wrist locks, then you letter her speech bubble in capitals. I DON'T CARE. I'LL NEVER TELL. Then you cannot decide whether she means the council or you.

The explosion goes in last. You have been saving the red for it. BAM, you letter across the bottom, the letters jagged like broken glass, and the flat-coloured sky suddenly seems braver. Downstairs a door slams and someone laughs, and for once the sound comes up through the stairwell rather than through the floor.

When the ink dries you tape the page to the window so the afternoon comes through it. The dots catch the light and the woman seems to breathe. You peel the tape off, roll the sheet under your arm, and take it down twelve floors in the lift that, for once, goes all the way.