Colour realism tattoo of the solar system running down a forearm, with the sun near the wrist and small planets stepping up towards the elbow.

Solar system planets along a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A forearm is held out from a person standing in denim shorts and dark lace-up boots, shown from the waist down. Along the inner forearm, a series of planets is rendered with soft shading and realistic surface detail, with the large orange sun at the wrist end and the smallest planet near the elbow. The palette is warm and varied, with blues, oranges, reds and browns, set against pale skin and a paved outdoor background.

Realism Forearm Solar system Planet Sun Saturn Earth Space

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ivy found the orrery in lost property in March, a brass thing with one wire arm snapped at the elbow, tagged in faded biro: Unclaimed, Platform 2, the 6.14 from Harrowby. She set it on the ticket desk beside the kettle, where the steam could get at it, and told herself she would ring the depot on Monday.

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Every evening she wound it. The planets ran out along their wires from the sun, a brass ball the size of a plum, down past the blue marble and the banded giant to a bead of red glass near the edge of the desk, which was Mercury, or so the card said. Mr Dunmore the signalman said it made the waiting room feel like the inside of a clock. Nobody came to claim it. Eleven months went by, and the wire got a little looser every winter.

One wet Thursday a girl of about nine came in with a carrier bag and a face set for disappointment. She had lost something on the 6.14, she said, a brass sun with little painted worlds on wires, and her dad had made the worlds from pebbles and gloss paint. Ivy lifted the orrery onto the counter without a word. The girl didn't rush at it. She touched the sun first, then ran one finger out along the planets, naming each one under her breath until she reached the smallest.

She stopped there. Ivy waited for her to take it, but the girl only turned the red bead over, looked at the painted crater on its underside, and smiled at something nobody else could see. "He did that one at the kitchen table," she said. "He said it was the hardest because it was closest to the light and kept getting too hot to hold." Ivy slid the orrery across the counter. Out on the platform, the 6.14 pulled in a few minutes late, and the bead rolled once across the desk and came to rest against the kettle.