Colourful botanical tattoo of a water lily pond with lily pads and reflections covering the upper arm, shown from three angles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Water lily pond sleeve on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm in a half sleeve, showing a pond of water lily pads, pink and yellow blossoms and reflected light across blue and green water. The shading is soft and painterly, with loose, broken edges rather than hard outlines. Colour is rich and dominant, and the composition repeats the same view in three panels side by side.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lilies came up again on the third of June, though the pond had been drained in March for the new liner, and Alma Pryce stood at the wall with her boots wet and counted pads the way her father counted sheep. Forty-one by noon. Some were no bigger than a teacup saucer, curled at the edges like old playing cards, and the pink blooms sat on them as if someone careful had placed them there.

Keep reading

The estate office wanted the pond cleared for a car park. Mr Hollis from the trust had a clipboard and a tidy grey moustache, and he said the reflections were a nuisance, that you could not see the koi through the glare. Alma said nothing. She had grown up in the lodge by the water and knew the blue came from the sky lying flat on the surface, that the green came from the rushes, and that when the wind dropped at six the whole pond turned into a painting nobody had signed.

On Friday she brought her grandmother's tin of pastels and sat on the flagstone until the light changed. She drew the broken edges the way the water made them, dabbing rather than lining, pink over yellow, a smudge of violet where the sky slid under a leaf. Hollis came down at seven with the clipboard under his arm and stopped behind her.

He looked for a long time. Then he said the car park could go round the top field, and he walked back up the path without another word. Alma closed the tin. The pond was already softening at its edges, the way things do when nobody is watching, and she left the last lily unfinished on purpose, so that tomorrow's light would have something to fill.

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