Colour tattoo of stylised blue and teal waves with black outlines and a curled crest, on the thigh, in a Japanese-influenced style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised blue waves on a thigh

Japanese · Thigh · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows layered, stylised sea waves with a curled crest on the upper right edge. Bold black outlines define the wave bands, which are filled with blue, teal and pale green shading and some grey tones. Colour ink dominates, and the design fills a rounded area of the outer thigh against the surrounding skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the fair reached Scarborough on Tuesday and I have finally finished the sea. Mr Pryce wanted something to hang behind the swingboats that would make the crowd think of the real thing, so I painted eleven lengths of canvas, each wave lapping into the next. He said they looked like rain on a window. I told him rain doesn't curl like that.

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The trouble was the crest. Every wave I drew came out flat, like ironing. Then on Thursday the big wheel's motor cut out at dusk and I was stuck up on the scaffold with a pot of teal and nothing to do but watch the lights come on below. The sea went from grey to bottle green while I sat there, and I finally saw how the bands stacked, each one darker than the last, with a pale line running along the top like a seam of light. I came down and put a curl on the far right, the way a wave breaks before it knows it's going to.

Pryce stood in front of the finished panels for a long time and said nothing, which from him is praise. Then he asked me to paint a second set for the winter quarters, so the men could stop saying the fair had no weather of its own. I've got the black outlines to do tomorrow. Bring your good brushes if you come down at Christmas. Some evenings I still feel the swingboats rocking under the canvas, though it's only the wind off the sea wall.

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