Black linework Vitruvian figure in a circle and square on a calf, with magenta, orange and blue watercolour washes and mirrored script above and below.

Vitruvian figure with watercolour wash on a calf

Fine line · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A figure based on the Vitruvian Man sits inside a circle and square, drawn in fine black linework with outstretched arms and legs. Behind and around the figure, loose watercolour washes in magenta, orange, pink and blue bleed outwards, with drips running down the lower leg. Mirrored lines of script run above and below the circle.

Fine line Calf Figure Circle Square Watercolour splash Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Herr Vogel never let me touch the good pen until I could write his notes backwards without lifting my wrist. The ink had to run the wrong way across the page so the words would read true in a looking glass, and he said a student who could not think in reverse would never draw a body properly. By the spring of my second year I could fill a whole sheet of mirror script before the kettle boiled, and I was proud of it in the foolish way young people are proud of small things.

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The commission was a single figure for the town hall ceiling, a man with his arms flung wide inside a circle and a square, every joint measured against a plumb line hanging from the rafters. Herr Vogel drew the outline in fine black and went home for supper. I was left with the washes. Madder, cobalt and a little orange lead I had been told never to use. I knocked the jar of madder off the bench at half past nine, and by the time I had mopped it up the colour had bled outward through the paper, pink and magenta blooming past the lines, a stain hanging down the lower leg where the figure met the floor.

He came in at six the next morning with his hat still on and stood over the board for a long while. I waited for him to tell me to scrape it down and begin again. Instead he took the cloth from my hand, dabbed once at a drip running toward the edge of the sheet, and said the figure had finally stopped pretending it was made of bone. Then he pulled a stool close and asked me to copy the stain in reverse onto the back of the paper, so the colour would seep through and the words would wait on the other side for whoever came after.