Colourful watercolour-style nebula tattoo in pink, red, blue and purple with small star dots, on the upper arm of a woman in a navy vest top.

Watercolour nebula on an upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A nebula or galaxy scene spreads across the upper arm in soft, bleeding washes of pink, red, blue and purple. Small white star dots sit within the darker purple areas, and the edges fade into the skin without hard outlines. The photograph is taken in profile against a dark background, with the shoulder and top of the arm in frame and the face not visible.

Upper arm Nebula Galaxy Star Space

Find an artist for this

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

Dear Nell, you will not believe what Mr Ashdown has done to the back bedroom wall. Mrs Pryce wanted it limewashed for the summer lets, and instead he has spent four evenings letting the paint run. Rose madder creeps down from the cornice, then cobalt goes in wet over it, so the two colours sit together like weather coming in off the bay. Last night he flicked white dots into the purple with the end of a toothbrush, and when the lamp caught them they looked like the sky you only see from the top of the cliff path at Stoke.

Keep reading

Mrs Pryce says he is mad and the damp will come through by Michaelmas. Hetty from room four sat on the landing steps with her knees under her chin and refused her supper. She said the wall looked like the inside of a shell, the bit that holds the sea when you put it to your ear. Mr Ashdown only laughed and said he was painting what the brass telescope on the pier showed him each night, a place so far off that its light takes longer to reach us than the town has been standing.

This morning he asked me to hold the lamp steady while he finished. He wiped his brush on his trousers, leaned in close and let one bright speck fall from the very tip, the smallest mark on the whole wall. Then he stepped back, looked at me, and said the stars were the only things he never let run, because they were the only things he was sure of.

Write soon and tell me whether Father has forgiven the coal bill. I have half a mind to ask Mr Ashdown to paint your bedroom too.