Black and grey realism tattoo of four women's portrait faces arranged across the back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four portrait faces on a back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Four overlapping portrait heads of women are drawn across the skin, each with soft graphite-style shading and detailed hair. The faces vary in angle and size, with one smiling broadly at the top centre and one wearing round glasses at the lower left. The work is entirely in black and grey, and the composition fills the frame with the portraits layered over a pale background of skin.

Realism Back Portrait Face Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down on that bench, the damp won't hurt you, and mind the hollyhocks, they're fragile as my patience. Now, you want the Gull Lane women told proper. Four of them, and not one sister by blood. Ivy Marsh had the end house with the broken gate, Mo Eversley kept the allotment and swore at the council, Peg Lunt did the urns at the chapel, and Bet Hanley, the one with the round glasses, read out the parish notices whether anybody asked her or not.

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The summer the river came up over the lane, the four of them sat out on the back lawn in folding chairs, the rain drumming on their hats. There was one sherry bottle going round in a jam jar because the good glasses had gone the week before. Mo's marrow had split open under the downpour and she was blaming the Council for that too. Peg dozed with her mouth open. Ivy said the trouble with photographs was that nobody ever took one when you looked lit right, and Bet said that was what drawing was for.

So in September a lad from the print shop came round with a sketchbook and a tin of pencils. He drew them one at a time, Ivy first, laughing so hard she had to hold her chin still. He worked from the sun on the lawn and the chairs going pale. When he'd finished, Bet took the pad, squinted at her own face, and said it had caught her looking pleased with herself, which was rare. Mo asked him to make her cross-eyed in the corner. He wouldn't.

When the others had gone in for their tea, I saw him lay the last pencil on the marrow stalk. It was still there when the rain came back, and so were the four of them, as grey as the morning.