Colourful watercolour-style tattoo of planets and moon phases running down the inside of a forearm, with Saturn and its ring near the middle.

Watercolour planets on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A column of planets and moon phases runs from near the wrist down the forearm, with a ringed planet in the centre and a small dot at the lower end. The planets are shaded with soft gradients in blue, orange and pink, and thin black lines suggest orbits and rays. Loose coloured washes spread behind the motifs, giving the piece a watercolour feel.

Forearm Planet Saturn Moon phase Solar system Orbit Space

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wedding had to be on the night the moon went new, because Tobias Hale's grandmother said a man should never marry under a light he could see through. So the whole parish walked up Thrale hill with lanterns, and Maud Corran carried a shallow bowl of river water so the planets could see their own faces in it before they came down.

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They came down in a column, the way they always had for a wedding. The red one arrived first, rubbing its shoulder as if it had been stung, and then the gold one with its loose ring slung round its middle like a hoop off a barrel. Behind them the moon came in its turns, thin as a paring, then half, then near full, and each one stopped in front of Maud to ask whether she was sure. The blue ones sat lower down the hill and said nothing at all, only dimmed a little, the way old men do when they are thinking about their own weddings.

Maud said she was sure. Tobias, who had trimmed lamps on the coast road for eleven years and knew the sky better than the vicar, held out his hand and did not speak. The ringed planet unhooked its band and offered it. It was far too wide, so Maud wore it on her wrist, and the dark planets sent their long black rays down the hill to tie the sleeve to his cuff.

The lanterns burnt out before dawn. In the spring the parish found a ring of scorched grass on the hillside and, at its centre, a small grey pebble for every year of the marriage, each one cold to the touch and no heavier than a new moon.