Watercolour dandelion tattoo with rainbow splashes and black script lettering along the side of the ribs.

Watercolour dandelion on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A black dandelion with loose seeds drifts across the side of the ribs, with fine script lettering running diagonally beside it. The rainbow watercolour splashes in pink, blue, green and yellow behind the seed head fade out softly across the skin. The composition is angled along the torso, with the colour washes dominating the upper area and the dark stem anchoring the lower half.

Botanical Lettering Ribs Dandelion Seed Watercolour Splash Script Lettering Rainbow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mae had been counting seeds since Bristol, the way her father used to count locks. Thirty-one on the bow rail, a few more caught in the coil of rope by the tiller, and one that had settled on the brass of the stove chimney as if it had paid a toll. The narrowboat Nettle crept along the Kennet and Avon in May, and everything on the towpath went to seed at once, so the air was never clear of them.

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She had promised Old Tom she would not waste the last clock of the season. He sat on the cabin step with his pipe unlit, watching the water go brown under the hull. "Blow it before the wind turns," he said, "or you'll be carrying it till autumn, and nothing keeps that long."

She knelt on the planks, cupped her hands round a dandelion head gone grey and fluffy, and breathed. The seeds lifted in a rush, pale parachutes catching the sun and tipping pink and blue off the reeds where the lock gates held the sky. Some dropped straight into the river. Some sailed over the lock-keeper's garden toward the church tower. One, she was certain, went after a heron.

Tom finally lit his pipe. "Never said which one was the wish," he said. "Only that you'd have to let go of the lot."