Fresh purple and blue tattoo of an abstract motif with watercolour-style splashes, being inked on a forearm by a tattooist wearing gloves.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Purple and blue abstract motif on forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A tattooist's gloved hand works a machine on a fresh design on the forearm, with a purple outline forming an abstract shape with angular strokes. Soft blue and violet wash splashes spread around the linework, and the surrounding skin is a warm tan tone with a blurred background.

Forearm Watercolour splash Tattoo machine

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

Dear Tom, the tide came up over the slipway again on Tuesday and took Mr Pryce's bench clean off the wall, so you can tell Captain Hale that the harbour is no quieter without you. Mum says to wear the wool vest and not the cotton one, which she has folded on the chair by the stove for when you come home, though she will not say when that is.

Keep reading

The inkwell you left me is still on the sill. I tried to draw the anchor you cut into the bulkhead at Christmas, the one with the crooked fluke, and it came out more like a gull with a bent wing. Then I dipped the nib in the blue I bought off the chandler and let it run, and the paper drank it up in purple bruises, and somehow the two things sat together on the page as if they had always been meant to. I have pinned it above the kettle. Mum says it looks like weather.

Mrs Cadell's boy went out on the Morwenna on Monday with a new pair of boots and a face like a bell. They say the wind is steady from the west and the herring are running thick off the point, so the men are glad of it. I walk down to the quay every evening after the lamps are lit and count the masts, and I always get one short, and then I remember it is only the one that has not come back yet, and I count again.

Write soon. Send me the words for the knot you promised, and tell me whether the sea is as blue out there as my ink, or whether it is only the colour of the things we were wishing for.

Ellie