Watercolour-style tattoo of a hare with an eye motif on the ribs, in brown, orange and purple washes with loose black linework.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Watercolour hare on the ribs

Ribs · Colour · Photo

A hare sits in profile across the side of the ribs, drawn with loose, broken black linework and filled with soft brown, orange and purple washes. Splashes and drips of ink surround the animal, with fine stems or reeds rising from below. The tattoo covers most of the frame against a dark top at the upper edge.

Ribs Hare Rabbit Eye Watercolour wash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hare was meant to be dry before the wind came up, but Ada Pruett had spent the morning fighting a blocked nozzle on her grandfather's airbrush while sand ticked against the workshop door. Out past the pumps, the road to Cassock Wells ran white and straight until the heat folded it into water. The garage owner, Mr Tallis, wanted a hare on the back wall, sitting in dry reeds, with an eye set into its shoulder so that it could keep watch over the forecourt. Her grandfather had always drawn them that way, and nobody in Cassock Wells had ever asked why.

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She mixed burnt umber with a thin wash of violet and let the colour bleed where it liked. When the brush flicked and a dark drop spattered the plaster beside the animal's ear, she nearly swore, then stopped and left it there. The drip looked like a bird going over. Two lorries rattled through without slowing. A boy from the garage brought her a cup of tea with three sugars and asked whether the hare was waiting for someone, and Ada said it was waiting for rain, which was the only answer she had.

By late afternoon the reeds had gone the colour of old pennies and the eye in the shoulder was the sharpest thing on the wall. Mr Tallis came out to look, lit a cigarette, and said nothing for a long while. Then he paid her in cash and asked her to sign the corner, the way her grandfather used to.

She signed it small, under the reeds, and when she stepped back the hare seemed to have turned its head a fraction towards the road, as if it had heard a car coming and was deciding whether to bother.