Four photographs of an upper arm sleeve in black outline linework showing cartoon princess characters, a carriage and a prince, with no shading or colour yet added.

Princess sleeve linework on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The collage shows a large arm sleeve drawn in black outline, with several cartoon princess characters, a prince, a horse-drawn carriage and a mermaid-like figure arranged across the arm. The lines are clean and even with no shading or fill, so the piece appears to be at an outline stage. The four panels show the arm from different angles, with the sleeve running from the upper arm down towards the elbow.

Upper arm Princess Mermaid Cartoon character Sleeve Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ink had gone on the night before the Duchess's wedding, and by the time Hester Vane climbed the coach-house stairs with her tray of brushes, every line was dry. They were thin and black and perfectly even, running the length of the gilt panel: a prince bending low, a pumpkin with its stalk snapped off, a pair of horses with one hoof still missing, a mermaid tangled in her own hair. Nobody had asked for colour. The Duchess had only wanted the drawings finished before the guests arrived.

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Mr Gorse, who ground the palace pigments, would not release a single blue without a warrant signed by the Chancellor, and the Chancellor was asleep in Lisbon. So the outlines stayed bare through the banquet, through the speeches, through a string quartet playing in the orangery. Hester watched the carriage stand empty in the yard, its lamps unlit, its panels looking like a book someone had only begun to read.

Just before midnight she took a tin of her nephew's wax crayons from her apron, the ones with the paper worn away, and knelt in the straw. The yellow went into the prince's hair first, then a stubby green into the mermaid's tail, which gave her a small, fierce satisfaction. Her hand grew steadier. By the time the palace clock began its twelve strokes she had filled the horses' manes with a cheerful orange and started on the pumpkin, and the carriage looked, for the first time, like something that might actually leave.

When the Duchess came down the steps and saw the colour spilling wildly over the lines, she frowned and asked who had done it. Hester said nothing and stepped aside. The wheels turned over the cobbles with a sound like a page being turned, and the wax-bright horses went clattering out through the gates.