Colour tattoo of two figure silhouettes in orange, red and green watercolour washes with dripping edges, on the outer upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Watercolour figures on an upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows two human figure silhouettes, one partly overlapping the other, filled with loose watercolour-style washes. The linework is soft and blended, with no hard outlines, and the edges run into paint-like drips down the lower part of the design. Orange and red dominate the figures, with green washes along the right side, and the design sits on the outer upper arm against a dark background.

Upper arm Figure Silhouette Drip Watercolour

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hoarding behind the Regal has been waiting since Easter for you to finish it, and the damp off the estuary keeps getting into the size. You mix the vermilion with a splash of ochre, the way Mr Tully taught you, then thin it until it runs like weak tea. Two shapes are already on the board: a woman leaning back against a man, the pair of them more suggestion than face. Your job is to fill them in before the manager sees wet paint and sends the boy round for someone cheaper.

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Green is what you're short of. The tin of viridian went to the lifeboat lettering last month, so you take what's left, a dab of bottle green from the back of the cupboard, and drag it down the right side of the figure where the man's arm should be. It bleeds and drips over the bottom edge of the board. You could scrape it off. Instead you watch it pool on the pavement planks and think the rain will get to it by Saturday anyway.

Mrs Pell comes past with her basket on the Thursday and stops to look. She says the couple look like they're melting into the sunset, and you tell her that's the idea. She laughs and says you'd better hurry, the summer people are already booking rooms. You don't tell her the figures are her and her husband, painted from memory of the dance at the Drill Hall, before he went away and before she stopped going to anything.

By the time the board is dry, the drips have set into little stalactites along the bottom, orange and green, like something slowly giving way in the heat. You sign it in the corner, small, the way you always do, and walk home with your fingers stained to the second knuckle, feeling for the first time all summer that the colour has gone exactly where it was meant to.