Black fine line tattoo of a solar system with a radiating sun, concentric orbits and a ringed Saturn, placed on a forearm against a brick wall.

Solar system orbit diagram on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a sun with radiating wavy rays at the centre of concentric orbit rings, with planets placed along the outer orbits, one of them ringed like Saturn. The linework is thin and even, with stippled dots forming one dotted orbit and some planets shaded with fine hatching. The design is in black and grey ink and spans the forearm, set against a red brick wall in the background.

Fine line Geometric Dotwork Forearm Solar system Sun Planet Saturn Orbit Ray

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The big top came down in Salisbury on Tuesday, and the wind took the last pennant over the water meadows while we were still pegging. Father won't use the word closure. He just sits on the back step of the caravan polishing the orrery, as if the one thing in this outfit that still runs true deserves all his attention.

You'll remember the sun. It's the same brass disc you used to hold up to the lamp to throw rays across the tent walls, and it still has every one of its wavy spikes, though two came loose in Hull and I've wired them back. The rings are wire, one for each planet, and the planets sit on their spokes like beads. Saturn is cracked at the join. I keep meaning to solder it, but every time I pick up the iron I think how much it would cost to make the thing look new when nobody is coming to look.

On Thursday a boy of about nine stood in front of it for most of the afternoon. He wanted to know why the dotted ring is the only one without a line, and Father told him that's where the bits that never got to be planets go, the stones that didn't make up their minds. The boy nodded as though that settled something, then asked if they ever get lonely. Father had no answer. He's been giving the same non-answer since.

The buyer from the museum in Bath is coming Monday with a van. He wants the sun and the outer orbits, not the dotted ring, which he says is "too fiddly to crate". So I've left the lamp on in the wagon, so the rays are lit when you come home. Come for the orbit, Tom, and bring the iron.

Love, Nell