Vertical watercolour tattoo on a forearm with a fine black line running through red, orange, yellow and blue splashes, topped by a small crescent outline.

Watercolour splash line down a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A long vertical tattoo runs down the outer forearm, built from a thin black ink line that is crossed by loose watercolour-style washes. The washes are red, pink, orange, yellow and blue, with soft bleeding edges and a few dotted marks near the lower half. A small crescent and circle outline sits at the top of the design, and the forearm is photographed against a white t-shirt and dark background.

Forearm Line Watercolour splash Crescent Circle Dot Abstract

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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 take the three o'clock obs on Ward Seven with the corridor lights dimmed to the colour of weak tea. The trolley wheels squeak on the lino however gently you push, so you have learned to lift them over the threshold instead. In bed four, the monitor draws its thin green line across the screen, rising and falling like a stitch pulled through cloth, and you read it the way fishermen read water. Beyond the window, a clipped white moon hangs over the car park.

Keep reading

Mr Pellow is awake, which he tells you is his own fault for drinking tea at teatime. He wants to talk about the summers he spent as a boy on the Tamar, when his father's boat went out past the bar before dawn and the river ran red and gold with the first light. You pull the plastic chair closer and let him describe the knock of oars against wooden pins. You don't mention that the line has been wandering a little, only that you're listening.

Halfway through a story about a dog that swam out to meet the boat, he laughs, and the line jumps in a sharp peak. You realise you've been watching it so hard that you've stopped breathing along with it. You count twelve beats under your breath, and the rhythm settles again, steady as the river at slack water.

By six the blinds have turned pale pink, the morning spilling in like a wash of colour dropped into water. You write the last observations in blue biro, sign the chart, and look up to find the moon has thinned to a crescent beside the sun. Mr Pellow is asleep with one hand open on the blanket, and the line on the screen runs on without needing anyone to watch it.