Black and grey realism tattoo of a banknote portrait with the number 100 and scrollwork on the calf, shown in two side by side photographs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Banknote portrait with 100 on a calf

Realism · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed portrait of an older man in a suit, set against a large numeral 100 and ornate scrollwork, copied from a banknote design. The shading is smooth and realistic, with fine detail in the face, hair and the feather-like flourish on the right. The tattoo is in black and grey only, and two photographs of the same leg are shown side by side.

Realism Calf Banknote Portrait Scrollwork Feather Man Suit

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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

On Sunday the lodge was quiet, and Eli Hartnell had the hundred-dollar note spread flat under the paraffin lamp, weighted at its corners with the chapel hymn book and a pair of pit boots. It had come across the table from a Cardiff sailor who owed for a month's lodging, and nobody in the row had ever seen money like it. Old Mr Pryce, the checkweighman, had held it up to the window and said it was worth more than the colliery paid in a fortnight, then given it back as though it might bite.

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Eli's trade was the pen. He sat in the colliery office six days a week copying tallies into the ledger with a goose quill he cut himself, and he had a steady hand and little else to show for it. That night he drew the old man's face on the back of a spoiled wages sheet. He began with the jowls, then the heavy lids, then the shadows under the cheekbones, and last the look of someone who had watched a great many people lie to him and forgiven very few of them.

The scrollwork was harder. Each curl had to lift off the paper like a wave going over a stone, and the feather at the edge he saved until the end, flicking the nib so the barbs fanned out. Where he pressed too lightly the ink ran thin and grey. By midnight the floor was littered with a hundred spoiled sheets. Ruth, his sister, came down in her shawl, looked at the mess, and moved the lamp closer without a word.

On Monday he laid his best copy on Pryce's desk beside the real note. Pryce looked from one to the other for a long time, then tapped the drawing with one black nail. "Keep the hundred," he said, "and bring me the ledger on Friday. I want to see whether your figures are as honest as his face." Eli folded the sheet into his tin of wages and walked back up the row with the quill behind his ear.