Flash sheet of eight bow designs, seven in black outline and one shaded red bow, with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bow tattoo design sheet

Mixed · Flash

A flash sheet showing eight drawn bow designs arranged in two columns on a white background. Seven bows are drawn in black outline with simple interior loops and trailing ribbon tails, while one bottom-left bow is filled in red with dark shading at its centre. The linework is clean and even, and the bows vary in size and shape.

Bow Ribbon Flash sheet

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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

Thursday. Mr Pelham has finally agreed to pin the bow card in the front window, though he says the eight drawings look like a row of nervous birds and should stay in the back drawer. I told him customers buy what they can picture themselves tying, and nobody can picture a bow until it has been drawn plainly enough to copy.

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The red one is my doing. I coloured it at the back bench with the last of the Christmas ink, shading the hollow of the loops until it looked like the inside of a shell. Mrs Abernethy came in on Tuesday for something to dress her granddaughter's christening parcel. She stood at the card for ten minutes before tapping the red one with a gloved finger. "That one," she said, "the one that looks as if it has somewhere to be."

She wanted it cut from grosgrain, with tails long enough to trail off the edge of the counter. I measured out four yards and sat with the scissors a while, because the tails are the hard part. Ink can make a ribbon fall any way you like, but real satin has its own ideas, and it takes a steady hand and a kettle of steam to coax it into a curl.

When she left, the card had a gap where the red bow had been pinned and the drawer was empty of that colour. There was ink on my thumb that would not come off, so I left it there until supper.