Sketch-style tattoo of a pale moon over a shadowed shape, with pink, purple and teal watercolour washes, on a limb.

Sketched moon with watercolour splashes

Other · Mixed · Photo

A pale orange circle, likely a moon or sphere, sits above a shadowed, partly sketched form in black linework and dotted shading. Loose black strokes cross the circle and extend outwards. Soft pink, purple, blue and teal watercolour washes fill the background behind the design. A tattoo machine sits to the left and a coloured flash sheet is visible at the top left.

Other Moon Sphere Abstract shape Splashes Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The river had risen two feet overnight, and Dora stood on the towpath in her father's oilskin, counting the mooring rings that had gone under. Behind her the Maud Ellen sat low against the piles, her cabin roof dark with wet. Her father had sold her in March. The new owner was due at noon with a man from the council and a cheque, and Dora had promised she would be gone before either of them arrived.

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She had not promised to leave quietly. At dawn, before the mist lifted, she had gone aboard with a pencil and the back of an old timetable and drawn the barge the way it looked from the lock gate: the hull a long shadow, the wheelhouse a pale square, and above it all the moon, still hanging there though the sky had turned to milk. Pencil was no good for water. She had pressed too hard and torn the paper twice.

A tug came up from the falls pushing its wash ahead of it. The ripples broke the moon into pieces across the surface, orange and then gone, and Dora felt the deck lift under her boots, just slightly, the way it used to when her father stepped aboard after a long shift. She held the sketch against her chest so the damp could not reach it.

When the buyer's car pulled up at twelve, she was already on the bank with the rope coiled over her shoulder and the drawing folded in her pocket. She did not look back at the barge. She had the moon, at least, and the moon had never needed a mooring.