Colourful watercolour-style tattoo of two overlapping hearts, one blue and green and one red and pink, with the script names Ruben and Ruby on the side of the body.

Two watercolour hearts with names Ruben and Ruby

Other · Colour · Photo

Two overlapping hearts sit side by side, one in blue, green and yellow and the other in red and pink, with soft splashes of colour around them. Black script reading Ruben and Ruby crosses the upper part of each heart. The soft, blended shading gives the piece a painterly finish, and the design fills the frame against lightly toned skin.

Other Heart Script Name Splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sign for Hollis's bakery had to be dry by Saturday, so I worked in the back room with the door propped open to let the turps out. Ruby Farrant came in just after eleven, her coat buttoned one hole out, and put a folded sheet on the bench. Two hearts, pencilled lightly, one sitting over the other. "Can you do them in watercolour?" she asked. "Not oils. I want them to look like they might run."

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I told her a sign painter learns to make paint behave, not run. But I mixed the blues anyway, a teal that went green where it pooled, and the lemon yellow I'd been saving for the Co-op lettering. She watched me dab the colour onto the paper, because her father had said no ink on the stall and she wanted to be sure I wasn't cheating him. Then she gave me the names. Ruben first, in a looping hand I had to practise three times on the spoil sheet. Then Ruby, her own name, sloping down toward the red heart.

"Who's the blue one for?" I asked. She laughed and said the blue one was the cold one, the one who took the Tuesday boat to Hull and sent postcards with nothing written on the back. I should have stopped there. Instead I flooded the red heart with rose madder while the blue was still wet, and the two colours bled into each other along the seam where they crossed.

When she came back for it, the seam had dried to a muddy plum. She held the paper up to the window for a long time, then said, "It's not right," and I agreed with her. She folded it into her coat anyway and left the bench smelling of turps and rain.