Colour tattoo of a stylised woman's face in red and orange watercolour washes with white dot splatter, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Watercolour woman portrait on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A stylised woman's face in profile sits within a large red and orange watercolour-like wash, with dark hair framing the image. Soft, blended shading and bleeding edges give a painted look, and white dots scatter across the red background. Bold colour dominates the composition, which wraps over the upper arm and shoulder.

Neo-trad Upper arm Woman Face Portrait Splatter Dot Hair

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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

Harrow Point had nine blocks and not one of them had seen a warm colour since 1971, so when the council let me paint the wall of the bin store I brought every tin I owned. I started with the red because red is what the eye reaches for first, then poured the orange over it while the first coat was still wet, the way my nan taught me to bleed a sunset onto a calendar from the chip shop.

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Mrs Adeyemi from flat 32 came down each morning with a tea and watched me work. She didn't say much. On the third day she pointed at the place where the red had pooled thick and dark and said, "That's my sister. She used to laugh with her head back like that." I hadn't painted a face. I'd painted nothing but colour. But when I looked again there was a profile in the wash, a chin lifted, a mouth open mid-laugh, and a shadow of hair falling down the side like smoke off a bonfire.

I loaded a brush with white and flicked it across the red in small dots, like the lights on a dress or rain caught under a streetlamp. Mrs Adeyemi touched one with her finger and it came away on her skin, which made her laugh properly for the first time since she'd come down, and I think that was the mural finished.

The council painted over it in March. Nobody asked me. I still have the photograph on my phone, and sometimes at night I scroll back to it, the orange running down the grey concrete like something that had decided to stay.