Small fine line colour tattoo of a red-haired mermaid with a green tail and a figure in a green gown, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two cartoon figures on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows two stylised cartoon figures facing each other: a mermaid with pink-red hair and a green tail on the left, and a figure in a long green gown with orange-red hair on the right. The linework is thin and even, with flat colour fills in red, pink, orange and green and no shading. The small design sits centrally on pale skin, with the two figures placed side by side.

Fine line Forearm Mermaid Figure Tail Cartoon Hair

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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

Pass that salt across, and mind the pan, because this is the part where an old cook is allowed to stretch the truth. My aunt Nessa signed on as galley girl aboard the Morag Fenn out of Grimsby the winter the harbour froze, and she swore on her mother's Bible that the mermaid came up under the stern lamp every night for a month, with her red hair plastered flat and her green tail slapping the water like a wet sail. She wanted bread. Nessa gave her the heels from the loaf, and the mermaid gave back a silver spoon, which is still in a drawer in Cleethorpes if you've a mind to doubt me.

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The trouble started when Mrs Haskins came aboard. She was the sailmaker's widow, sent out to mend the canvas, and she wore a long green gown she'd stitched herself from an old curtain, with orange thread at the cuffs so the light caught it. She'd come down to the galley for hot water and found Nessa talking to the porthole. Mrs Haskins didn't laugh. She pulled a chair up, set her needle down, and said, 'Then ask her what she's lost.' The mermaid, when she was asked, said she had lost the way home, because the tide had dragged her off the Spurn sandbank and her grandmother had gone under without her.

So Mrs Haskins went over the side at slack water with a lamp and a bag of thread. Nessa watched from the rail as the two of them waded out along the sandbank, the gown trailing green into the shallows and the red hair bright against the grey. They stitched a new fin to the tail by moonlight, so Nessa claimed, and then the mermaid pointed east and was gone. Mrs Haskins came back up the ladder with wet hem and dry eyes, and she never once mentioned it. The spoon, though, she kept.