Colour tattoo of stylised teal and blue ocean waves with white foam crests and black outlines, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised ocean waves on a forearm

Japanese · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a cluster of stylised ocean waves with curled crests, white foam tips and small bubbles around the edges. Fine parallel lines model the water in shades of teal, deep blue and green, with black outlining defining each wave. The design fills the frame vertically, with a large curling wave at the lower right and smaller waves rising above it.

Japanese Neo-trad Forearm Wave Sea Water Bubble

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

Day 212 of the Sounding. The swell came in from the west again this morning, curling up over the old breakwater the way it always does, all teal and pewter, and for a second I forgot to write anything down because the crests were so exact. Marguerite says the sea builds its waves like a joiner builds a stair, one tread at a time, and I have started to believe her.

Keep reading

We are mapping Hollin Bay, which was a seaside town before the water took the high street. Our sonar brings back the shopfronts as grey ghosts. Yesterday it found a bicycle, a bus shelter and, on the church roof, a weathervane still pointing north. Ruth wanted to log it as a navigational hazard. I wanted to log it as a witness. We compromised on both.

The big wave out past the pier has a foam crest like lace, and it rolls over the drowned slipway in a long turning barrel. Each time it breaks I count the bubbles that rise after, small and perfect, the way the gulls used to scatter when I was a child. The bubbles always come up in threes. I have stopped trying to explain that to anyone at the depot.

This evening I dropped the sounding line one last time over the church spire. It came back wet and heavy, and when I hauled it up there was a tin cup tangled in the rope, full of seawater and one green glass button. I have pinned the button to this page. Tomorrow we chart the next street, and the sea, for once, seems in no hurry.