Watercolour-style paw print tattoo with black pads and rainbow splashes on the upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Watercolour paw print on upper back

Back · Mixed · Photo

A paw print with four toe pads and a larger main pad, filled in solid black with soft, fuzzy edges. Around it, loose splashes of orange, red, yellow, green and blue fade outwards, giving a painted watercolour look. The design sits centrally on the upper back, with a red top strap visible at the left edge of the frame.

Back Paw print Paw Splash Rainbow

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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

You find the prints before you find the dog. They cross the lower orchard in a dotted line, four toes and a broad heel pressed dark into the dew, and by the time you reach the gate the morning has already turned warm enough to smell of windfalls. Late August does that. The plums split on the branch, the wasps go drunk on the fallen Discoveries, and nobody in the village has bothered to pick the Bramleys since the rain stopped.

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The trail leads to Aunt Ruth's packing shed, where the door hangs open on one hinge. Inside, her paint jars stand in a row on the bench, lids off, the water in them gone the colour of stewed tea. Someone has trodden through the lot. Orange smears across the flagstones, then red, then a bruise of green, and a long streak of blue runs out under the door as if it was in a hurry to leave.

Pip is asleep under the Bramley tree with his legs stretched into the grass. When you lift one of his feet, the pad is black as a boot print, with a halo of colour bleeding out around it. He thumps his tail twice and does not get up. You sit beside him in the dappled light and wait, because a dog who has painted the whole shed is not going anywhere in a hurry.

Ruth comes out with a sheet of cartridge paper and a fresh jar of water. She presses the paw onto the page, lifts it, and holds it up to the sun. The colours spread outward from the black like weather rolling over a hill. 'Leave it,' she says. 'I'm keeping this one.'