Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Frankenstein's monster flash being painted

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A hand holding a fine brush paints a profile portrait of Frankenstein's monster on cream paper, with a bold black outline and flat green, yellow and grey shading. A red and orange sunburst sits behind the head and a stylised flower with green leaves is at the lower right. The palette is mostly colour, with black used for the outlines and hair, and a tattooed forearm is visible at the right edge.

Traditional Monster Portrait Flower Sunburst Hand Paper

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pell charged a shilling extra for the lamp in the back parlour, and every evening that autumn Mr Quint paid it without complaint, then sat under the yellow bulb at the big deal table and painted the same man over and over. I was nineteen and sweeping sand out of the hall for my keep, so I saw the sheets before they dried: cream card, a black line as thick as a bootlace, a face the colour of a pond in February.

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'Who is he?' I asked on the Thursday, when the gale had got under the slates and the whole house smelled of wet wool. He didn't look up. 'Nobody's son,' he said. 'That's the trouble with him. Somebody put him together out of spare parts and then walked off to be sensible.' He dipped the finest brush in the jar and worked the bolts into the neck one at a time, small as full stops.

The sunburst went on last, a ring of orange fading to nothing, with rays like a child's drawing of the sun over the sea. 'Sunrise,' I said. 'Sunset,' he said, 'depending which way you're facing when you're made.' Then he painted the flower at the bottom, five petals and a black eye in the middle, because, he said, a monster needs something to be gentle about.

On the last night of the season the lodgers went down to the front in their coats, and I found the card propped against the teapot with my name written on the back. Under the paint the monster looked out to sea, and the sun behind him was going down, not up. I still have it. Mrs Pell wanted it framed for the hall, but I keep it in the drawer with the tide tables.