Colourful watercolour-style splash tattoo with black ink spatters and outlined bubbles wrapping around the ankle and lower leg.

Watercolour splash and bubbles on an ankle

Ankle · Colour · Photo

The tattoo covers the ankle and lower leg with a splash of orange, pink, green and teal washes, overlaid with black ink spatters. Several outlined circles and bubbles float across the design, with some left as plain skin and others shaded to look three-dimensional. The soft colour blends and loose, irregular edges give the piece a painted, watercolour appearance, and the design wraps up towards the calf.

Ankle Splash Bubble Circle Ink splatter Watercolour wash

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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

The glycerine had gone cloudy again, and Dad swore at it the way he swore at the generator, as if the bucket might be shamed into behaving. I tipped the mix over the lip of the trestle and watched the fairground lights smear across it: pink from the waltzer, green from the coconut shy, and a sour yellow from the burger van that never cleaned its fryer.

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The stall had been painted the summer I turned nine, when Dad splashed orange and teal across the boards and then flicked black ink from an old paintbrush until the whole front looked like it had been shot at. Customers thought it was deliberate, which it was, mostly. The sign said BUBBLES FOR A PENNY in letters that had run in the rain, so people read it as an invitation to be tricked.

A boy came up that Saturday with a fistful of coins and a face like a closed door. He wouldn't say what he wanted, so I gave him the long wand and let him blow. His first bubble was too big and wobbled off the wand like a jellyfish, catching the light. It drifted past the candyfloss, over the dodgems, and came to rest on the wet paint of the board, where it sat perfectly round and didn't pop. The boy stared at it. Then he laughed, properly, and I realised I had not heard that sound from anyone since we'd left the seaside.

We packed up at midnight. Dad wrapped the boards in tarpaulin and I found the bubble still there on the paint, a tiny clear dome gone dry and cloudy at the edges. I didn't scrape it off. I left it where it was, next to the black spatter, for whoever came after us to wonder about.