Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Volkswagen logo with dripping ink on calf

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black Volkswagen roundel sits on the outer calf, with ink dripping downwards in long, uneven runs. The lettering and emblem are rendered as bold black shapes with no shading, and the drips add a sense of movement. The shot is taken at a shallow depth of field, so a red car and dark tarmac sit softly out of focus behind the leg, with khaki shorts at the top of the frame.

Blackwork Calf Logo Drip Car Emblem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad never let anyone touch the bonnet of the red car on the dodgems trailer, so when the rain got under the badge I had to be the one to fix it. Tuesday, Hartlepool, a sky the colour of wet cement. The round silver emblem had gone dull at the edges, and something black was running down the paint beneath it, a slow seep that Dad swore was rust and I knew was just the sealant giving up.

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I scraped at it with a butter knife and got a thumb of tar for my trouble. Mrs Okafor from the candyfloss stall came over with a tin of Brasso and a cup of tea and told me that a thing that drips is only sad if you stop it halfway. So I let it run. I painted over the spill in long uneven strokes, letting each one gather and sag at the bottom, until the badge looked like it was weeping ink onto the tarmac.

Dad came back from the Co-op at six and stood in front of the car with his hands in his pockets. He didn't shout. He looked at the drips for a long time, then at the black circle I'd outlined in masking tape, then at me. 'Your gran drove one of these to Skegness in 1974 with the wipers tied up in a sock,' he said. 'Never once cleaned the badge.'

Next morning the fair opened with the paint still tacky. A boy in a Newcastle shirt bumped me on the second lap and laughed at the drips, and I laughed with him, because the black runs made the old roundel look like it had been left out in the weather for forty years and still meant to go round one more time.