Two forearms show watercolour-style heart tattoos in rainbow colours, one larger on the outer forearm and a smaller one near the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Watercolour hearts on two forearms

Forearm · Colour · Photo

The larger heart is outlined in black with a pale unfilled centre, surrounded by orange, blue, green, purple, red and pink washes that spread across the forearm. The smaller heart on the second arm is outlined in black and filled with yellow, green, pink and red blotches, with a few drips at its edge. Both tattoos are on pale skin against a dark background, and the arms cross diagonally in the frame.

Forearm Heart Watercolour splash Paint splash Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, pull that stool closer, because I'll not tell it twice and the lamps are only just lit on Digbeth Street. The Pask sisters, Nell and Bea, had been sent to the back yard of their father's sign shop with one brief: paint the board for the new barber's, nothing fancy, just the name in gold leaf. Instead they argued over whose jars were whose until the water pot was the colour of a bruise.

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Bea wanted a heart left white in the middle of the board, a clean space for the barber to hang his own name on later. Nell wanted the whole thing soaked in colour. So while Bea was inside fetching turpentine, Nell tipped rose madder and cobalt and a splash of lemon across the boards, letting it run where it liked. When Bea came back she found a riot of orange and blue, and in the middle, untouched, a pale heart Nell had outlined in black with the tip of a fine brush, because she could not bring herself to fill it.

Their father came out at midnight with his coat over his nightshirt, looked at the mess for a long time, and said the paint was wasted. Then he dipped a brush in the green, flicked one bright drop at the corner, and went back to bed without a word. Bea laughed so hard she had to sit on the step.

The barber's board went up the next morning with its gold name and its spill of colour, and it hung there for years until the shop changed hands. The sisters never agreed on much after that, but each of them still carries a small heart on her wrist, and I'll tell you, the one on Nell's arm is the one with the centre left empty.