Colour realism tattoo of a tipped-over pink nail polish bottle and brush on a printed newspaper, with a watercolour sky behind, on a limb.

Spilled nail polish on newspaper

Realism · Other · Mixed · Photo

A tipped-over nail polish bottle leaks pink polish onto a printed newspaper backdrop, with a puddle and splatters spreading across the text. An open metal pot holds the brush, and a soft, watercolour-like cloud of purple, orange and teal fills the background. Smooth shading and strong highlights give the glossy bottle and pot a realistic, dimensional finish.

Realism Other Nail polish Paint splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dolores had the whole front page of the Evening Courier spread face down on the bench when the bottle went over, and by then there was no saving the Friday edition. Pink ran across the columns of council news like the first rain on a dry road, and Ray swore, then stopped swearing because the foreman was coming down the stairs with the list.

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The bottle had been her sister's, bought at the Saturday market off a stall that sold everything in fives. The colour was called Plum Fizz, and the lid was gummed shut with a tuft of cotton. It had sat on the stool by the press for a week because nobody wanted to be the one to move it. Now it lay on its side, leaking into the word Civica and a column about a bridge nobody would ever finish.

Ray dipped a brush in the tin of white spirit, and the brush came up pink. He tried the flat of his hand, and the pink went to his wrist. Dolores laughed until she had to sit on a crate. Outside, the market shutters were coming down through the rain, and someone was singing in the lane, badly.

The paper went in the bin. Ray kept one sheet, the one where the puddle spread across a photograph of a shut-down cinema, and pinned it above the kettle. Every Friday after that, the kettle boiled and the stain looked back at them, pretty as anything, like a joke only the two of them were in on.