Colour tattoo of abstract yellow, black and purple swirls covering the outer forearm, with soft shading that resembles liquid marbling.

Yellow marbled swirl on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A healed or fresh colour tattoo of an abstract, fluid design fills most of the outer forearm, with a bold yellow form swirling through black and purple outlines. The linework is loose and organic, with soft grey shading that gives the yellow areas depth and a wet, marbled look. The design is set against a plain white background, with a dark maroon sleeve visible at the top left.

Forearm Abstract Swirl

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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 spoil tip above Gwen Hollow has been smoking since March, and by June the sulphur has crept down its flanks in crusts the colour of old custard. You are nine and forbidden to climb it, so naturally you have a pocketful when you reach the back step of the chapel hall, where your mother is laying out the bookbinder's trays.

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Mr Ansell marbles endpapers for the parish registers. He floats ink on a trough of size water, drags a bent wire through it, and lays the paper on the surface to take whatever shape the colour agrees to. You watch him spoil three sheets for every good one. "You can't tell it what to be," he says, wiping his fingers on his apron. "You can only tell it when to stop."

The morning the colliery siren goes off at four and doesn't stop, the men come up the road in their boots and the hall fills with grey light. Nobody sits down. You slip past the legs to the trough, where the yellow has risen in one slow loop, and you press a sheet onto it before anyone can tell you not to. When you lift it, the marbling has folded itself into a curl like a sleeper turning toward a lamp, black edges and purple seams tight around the gold.

Ansell takes the sheet from you and holds it to the window for a long time. "Keep it," he says. You fold it into the back of the register of births, where a little of the yellow has bled into the names. The tip burned for another eleven years. You still find sulphur grit in your coat seams, bright as the morning you were told not to touch it.