Watercolour-style swan tattoo in blue, black and red with splashes, shown across the ribs in three side-by-side photographs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Watercolour swan tattoo on the ribs

Ribs · Colour · Photo

A swan's head and neck curve across the side of the torso, with a rounded swirl behind it and loose black ink splashes to the right. The linework is soft and sketchy, with blue shading on the body and red and orange washes around the eye and splashes. The three panels show the same tattoo from slightly different angles, with the image edges cropped against a dark background.

Ribs Swan Splashes Swirl Eye

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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 swan came off the Ouse in the second week of February, when the river had climbed over the towpath and the reeds stood in brown water to their knees. Mrs Pickering from the bakery sent her boy running for me before the loaves were cool, because the bird had been circling the mill pond for three days and would not let anyone near the bank. I brought my paint box and a jar of ox gall, which my father swore by, and sat on an upturned crate with the water sloshing over my boots.

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The swan did not mind me. Its eye was dark and wet and very patient, the way a magistrate looks at a man who has come to plead his case. I wet the paper, dropped in the cobalt, and let it bloom along the curve of the neck. Each time I lifted the brush the colour ran where it pleased. Where the orange met the water it spat and bled, and I left the spatter as it fell, black ink flicked from the tip of a quill, because the bird seemed to want the mess.

By dusk the swan had climbed onto the bank and tucked its head beneath a wing. I packed the box and pinned the painting to the mill gate with two rusted nails. In the morning the gate was bare, the bird was gone, and the water had risen another hand's width. Stuck to the wet corner of the paper lay a single grey feather, with a red smear across where the eye had been.

Mrs Pickering said she would have it framed. I told her to frame the feather instead, since the swan had obviously made its own choice about the picture.