Watercolour-style maple leaf tattoo in red, orange and teal with bold black linework on a forearm.

Watercolour maple leaf on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A loose, abstract maple leaf sits on the forearm, outlined in bold black strokes that break into spiky points. Red, orange and yellow wash fills the leaf, with teal splashes spreading at the lower edge. The design is centred on a plain, pale arm against a dark floor and chair.

Forearm Maple leaf Leaf Splash Abstract

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boats of Gullhaven went out before the bell, and every spring the fishwives hung a red cloth in the chandler's window so the men could find their way home through the fog. That year the cloth had gone down with Tom Rourke's cap and oilskins when the Morag Ann broke her mooring in March, so Ellen Rourke cut a leaf from the scrap of her husband's old sail instead and sewed it with yellow thread, because the only maple in the village grew behind the gutting sheds and she had no other colour to spare.

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The fog came in on the seventh day. The bell rang until its rope frayed, and the boats did not come. Old Mabry Stroud said the sea keeps what it likes and the fishwives should go home and mind their kettles. Ellen did not go home. She carried the leaf out to the point, pinned it to a gaff pole, and held it up over the black rocks where the spray came in teal and white, and she waited with her arms going numb.

A gull cried somewhere to the east. Then a lamp showed, very faint, and another behind it. The leaf had caught what little light there was and burned at the top of the pole like a coal, its black edges sharp against the grey. The Kestrel Jane came in first, then the Lark, then the Morag Ann with her broken mast lashed to her side and Tom standing in the bow with a hand raised.

The leaf hung on the chandler's wall for years after, its colours going soft in the salt air. Children in Gullhaven still ask why it looks like a flame that has been dropped in the sea, and their mothers tell them to hush and eat their bread.