Black and cyan stencil-style design of a stylised standing figure with flowing hair and cyan ornamental patterns on the torso, arm and legs, shown without any body part.

Black and cyan stylised figure design

Mixed · Flash

A stylised standing female figure with flowing hair at the top, built from bold black fragmented shapes that suggest armour or clothing. Cyan swirling ornamental patterns sit across the torso, arm, waist and leg, contrasting with the solid black areas. The figure is shown in full on a plain white background, with the lower legs and feet separated by an open gap.

Figure Woman Hair Ornament Armour Swirl Stencil

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dilys had cut the last of the stencil plates at half past four, when the light off the canal had gone the colour of weak tea. The commission sat on the bench beside her: a tall figure for the Mill Theatre's autumn production, armour laid out as separate black plates, the cyan swirls to be painted on afterwards by someone else. She had never been asked to leave a gap before. Mr Halloran, the director, wanted the feet to come later, from another cutter in another town, so the audience could believe the woman had walked in from somewhere.

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Dilys did not like loose ends. She laid the knife flat and counted the fragments: nine for the left arm, eleven for the torso, the sweep of hair cut in three long strokes that she had copied from a shipping label because it had the right nerve in it. The waist plate was the hardest. She had cut the swirl twice, once too deep, so the ornament split like a cracked shell, and the second time she let the blade wander until it came out looking like water finding its way downhill.

When the theatre rang on the Friday to say the feet had gone astray in the post, Dilys sent the plates on anyway, rolled in brown paper, with a note that read only: 'She is standing. Use your judgement.' Three weeks later a photograph came back from the dress rehearsal. The lights had been set at the wrong angle, and the figure looked as though she had stepped off the paper and was waiting at the edge of a road, hair lifted, one hip forward, for someone to tell her which way to go.