Colourful tattoo copying a child's crayon drawing of stick figures and shapes on a shoulder, with the original paper drawing held up beside it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Child's crayon drawing tattooed on shoulder

Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A tattoo on a shoulder and upper back reproduces a child's drawing of stick figures with rounded heads, outlined in blue, red, green and orange. Thin, wobbly coloured outlines and flat, uneven fills give the design a crayon look, with no shading. A sheet of paper showing the original drawing is held up on the right, so the tattoo and its source sit side by side.

Shoulder Stick figure

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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

Dear Tom, the post came on Tuesday with your letter and the photograph of the ship, and I have propped both against the teapot so I can look at them while I peel the potatoes. Pearl has sat at the kitchen table every evening since, crayons spilling out of a jam jar, determined to make you a proper picture before the next post goes.

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Enclosed is the result. She says it is all of us. The tall blue-headed fellow with the long legs is you, and she has given you pink feet so you will not lose your way home. The little one beside you in the orange hat is her, and the red square is the wireless, because she says you always had it on. The green man with the stick arms belongs to Mr Oakes next door, but she has decided he is ours now, so he has been drawn in regardless.

I asked her why the sun was tucked in the corner. She said that was the window you would be looking out of. Then she asked whether a drawing could travel in the post and still be the same drawing when it got there, and I said yes, and she said then you had better keep it somewhere dry.

So fold it in half, not in quarters, and keep it in the middle of your kitbag where the damp cannot reach. Write when you make port. Pearl has already counted the days on the calendar by the door, and I have stopped telling her it will be longer than she thinks.

Your loving Mam, Edie