Three views of a colour full sleeve tattoo of a space scene with a red sun, ringed planets, stars and nebula clouds, on an arm against a black background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Space scene full sleeve

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The photograph shows one arm from three angles, with a full sleeve tattoo of outer space covering it from shoulder to wrist. A glowing orange sun, ringed planets and a swirling red and blue nebula sit among scattered stars, with a red spiral form that resembles an eye on the lower arm. The blended shading gives soft gradients in purple, blue, red and orange against a dark background.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Space Planet Sun Saturn Nebula Star Galaxy Eye

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

Saturn had jammed again. Dad's orrery was older than the fairground itself, a brass arrangement of gears and wire that carried the planets round a bulb the size of a peach, and every night at the Michaelmas fair Saturn stuck fast on the wrong side of the sun. I climbed onto the tailboard of the caravan with a tin of oil and a bent knitting needle while the generator coughed in the field behind us.

Keep reading

Dad had painted the sky cloth himself, the year before my mother left with the high-striker man. It hung inside the tent behind the rides, a whole black galaxy with a copper sun, rings around the planets, and a great red spiral in the corner that he called the watcher. Kids paid a shilling to lie on the straw and look up. Nobody ever asked what the watcher was looking at.

Saturn came free with a click I felt in my teeth. The bulb warmed and the wire turned, and the whole brass system began to sway as the wind found the tent flaps. I stayed on my knees in the straw and watched the painted nebula shift in the lamplight, blue fading into violet, until the red spiral seemed to have drawn a little closer to the stars.

When Dad came back at midnight with chips wrapped in newspaper, I told him the orrery was fixed. He looked up at the cloth for a long while, then at me. 'Good,' he said. 'Now don't let it see you counting the stars.' I didn't ask what he meant. I just kept the needle in my pocket, in case the watcher wanted its planets back.