Pencil sketch outline of a fairy wing with curled tips on white paper, a tattoo design shown without any body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fairy wing sketch outline

Black and grey · Flash

A hand-drawn outline of a single fairy wing with a long upper edge that curls at the top and a scalloped lower wing with a second curled tip at the bottom. The lines are thin and sketchy, with some lighter construction lines visible beside the main contour. The drawing is in grey pencil or ink on a plain white background, with no shading or colour.

Wing Outline Sketch Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marjorie, the wings came back from the dyer's with their scallops gone soft and grey, so I have spent three nights at the bench with a pencil and the wire off Mr Ashdown's old coat hooks. You will laugh, but I drew the outline first, the way you taught me to cut a pattern before touching the cloth. One long upper edge that climbs from the shoulder seam and curls over at the top like a fiddlehead, and a lower wing that breaks into soft points before it turns back on itself at the heel.

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The pencil ghosts are my fault. I kept sketching the curve a few times beside the real line, each try a little higher, because the first one always looked too stiff. Ashdown says the audience cannot see the difference from the gods, but I can, and I will not have a wing that lies flat when the lights come up. So I sewed the wire into both curled tips and let the points rise and fall with each breath of the stage fan. The rest of the wing is only muslin stretched over a frame, pinned to a bodice that has seen four Christmas pantomimes already.

Yesterday the stage manager asked whether the wings could be lighter, and I nearly told him the lines were already as light as a pencil could make them. Instead I took the sketch down from above my machine and held it against the window. The sheet is thin and marked all over, but in the right light the faint lines beside the main curve show through like the wing was tried a dozen times before it was ever right.

I have pinned it back up. Come and see the first dress rehearsal, and bring your reading glasses, because the programme printer has spelt my name wrong again. Love, Edith.