Line drawing of a sailing ship on paper, with blue, yellow, pink and maroon watercolour splashes behind it, shown as a tattoo design sketch.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sailing ship with watercolour splashes

Mixed · Flash

A sketched sailing ship seen from a three-quarter angle, with sails, rigging and a flag drawn in loose, sketchy maroon linework. Soft blue, yellow and pink watercolour splashes and dark ink spatters surround the ship and trail off its bow and stern. The design sits centrally on a white sheet, with a patterned fabric visible at the edges of the photo.

Ship Sailing ship Sail Rigging Flag Watercolour splash Ink splatter Sea

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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

Hush now, the band's sitting down for their tea, so you'll have my story whether you like it or not. Every Saturday in the old Pavilion, when the last waltz goes round, you'll see a patch of blue on the boards by the bandstand. Nobody mops it, because nobody can. That's the paint of Maud Ellery, the last painter who ever sailed out of Brixham, aboard a brig called the Ardent Wren.

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Maud had a studio above the chandler's and a debt to the bank as tall as her mainmast. She painted ships for men who wanted their boats to look grander than they were. One October she was commissioned to paint the Wren's sails, and the owner paid her in a cask of black ink and told her the sea would finish the job. She mixed the ink with her watercolours, climbed aboard with a box of brushes and a flask of rum, and that was the last anyone saw of her on dry land.

The weather came in off the Channel like a dropped tray. For three days the Wren rolled while Maud painted sails that the wind kept tearing from her hands, so she threw her brushes over the rail one by one and let the spray do the rest. When the mist finally lifted, the crew swore the water had gone the colour of a shelled peach and the ink had run out across the whole sky. Maud was never found, but the brig limped into harbour with her canvas washed in yellow and blue, and a maroon flag flying that nobody had hoisted.

So when you hear that last waltz, watch the floor by the bandstand. If the light's right, you'll see the blue creep back towards the door, a pale ship sliding through it, and a woman in a paint-stained smock dancing with nobody at all.