Full sleeve tattoo of watercolour washes in orange, red, blue and pink with black ink splatter and brush strokes, running from the upper arm to the wrist.

Watercolour splatter full sleeve

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A full arm sleeve covers the upper arm and forearm with loose watercolour-style washes in orange, red, pink and blue. Dense black ink dots and splatters cluster across the middle of the arm, with heavier black strokes near the shoulder and a thin black line running down the forearm. The skin is shown against a plain white tank top and a white wall with a red painted panel, which is part of the background.

Upper arm Forearm Watercolour Splatter Abstract Brush stroke Dot Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the trestle, because I'll not tell it twice. You all know the Pike wedding, the summer the rain came sideways off the moor. Harold Pike turned up at the village hall with two paint tins on a barrow and a bag of old toothbrushes, and he'd been asked to hang the bunting. He hung the bunting. Then he painted the wall.

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Nell Garside had asked for nothing fancy. Her mother wanted cream and lilac and a string quartet from Skipton. Harold worked from the far end of the hall, pulling orange across the plaster in long wet sweeps, then rose, then a cold blue that he dragged down from the rafters like a tide going out. The rain found the gaps in the roof and ran down through the colours, and he let it. When the paint was running he dipped a toothbrush in black ink and flicked it at the wall, so the stars came out of nowhere and settled where they liked. Nobody stopped him. Nell's mother said nothing for an hour.

The black line came last. It was rainwater that had drawn it, sliding from the top of the wall to the skirting board in one thin unbroken stroke, and Harold said he'd only followed it with the brush. Old Tom Garside, the bride's grandfather, stood under it with his hat in his hands and told them all to leave the thing alone. The vicar agreed. By dusk the lamps were lit and the wall had caught the glow, and half the parish walked round the back to look at a sunset that had decided to stay put.

They're still married, Nell and her husband, and the hall has been painted cream twice since. Every few years somebody goes up the ladder with a bucket and a toothbrush, trying to get the spatter right, and every time they come down and say the stars never quite land where they did before.