Watercolour-style tattoo of three butterflies in orange, red and teal with splashes of colour, on the inner forearm.

Watercolour butterflies on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Three butterflies in orange, red, pink and teal sit above and beside soft blue and green wash shapes and small paint-like splatters. The wings are outlined with delicate dark linework and fade into loose, blended edges that mimic watercolour. The tattoo is shown on a pale forearm against a blurred wooden floor and dark surface, with the design filling the centre of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At half four the flour hangs in the lamplight like something half remembered, and I am scraping the last of the sponge into tins when the knock comes at the back door. Nobody knocks on a bakery at that hour except the milk man, and he never waits for an answer.

Keep reading

It is a tin box of watercolour cakes, dented at one corner, with a name written on the lid in biro: Elsie, age nine. Inside, the pans are dry and cracked, the reds gone to rust, the blues still holding a little colour at their edges. Tucked under the lid is a note in careful capitals. PLEASE CAN YOU MAKE THESE INTO SOMETHING. MUM SAYS YOU CAN MAKE ANYTHING OUT OF SUGAR.

I soak the pans in warm water and a spoonful of vanilla, then work the colour onto sheets of wafer paper with my finest brush. Marigold orange for the first wings, a bruised pink where the raspberry pan was, and teal from the blue that Elsie must have used most. I let the colours run into each other on purpose. By the time the sky over the car park turns the colour of weak tea, there are three butterflies drying on the cooling rack, their edges soft as breath on glass, and a few stray flecks where the brush flicked.

Elsie comes at seven, one hand gripping her mother's coat. She stares at the rack for so long that the queue behind them starts to shuffle. Then she lifts the biggest teal one with two fingers and frowns at it. "It looks wet," she says. "Like it's still flying."

"Then mind your fingers," I tell her, and I wrap it in tissue for her to carry home.

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