Greyscale pencil tattoo design of a bearded banknote portrait with a 100 note, rolled cash and dollar signs in smoke, shown on paper and not placed on the body.

Franklin portrait with cash and smoke design

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a man's face in profile with a 100 banknote motif above and a rolled stack of bills at the lower right. Dollar signs and wisps of smoke surround the portrait, with ornate scrollwork framing the top. The shading is soft and greyscale, with smooth tonal gradations on the face and sharp linework on the notes and scroll.

Realism Portrait Banknote Dollar sign Smoke Scroll Pencil drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The compost heap had been sulking all week, so on Saturday I forked it over and found an oilcloth parcel tied with garden twine, sitting in the cold middle where nothing rots. Ray had buried it there the spring before the hospice took him. I told the vicar he'd carried his secrets to the grave, which was true in the lazy way most things are true at funerals.

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Inside were notes rolled tight and banded with paper, each one printed with a hundred in the corners, gone soft as lettuce leaves from the damp. There was a smell of Old Holborn and wet earth. Ray never trusted banks, nor the Post Office, nor any man who wore a tie to the bookies. He'd stand by the bonfire in the corner plot with his pipe going, blowing smoke at the blackbirds, saying a fellow ought to keep his money where he could watch it burn if he needed to.

So I did what he would have done. I took the parcel down to the bonfire heap, struck a spill from the kitchen drawer and put it under the hedge clippings. The old statesman on the front curled and browned at the edges, his long hair lifting off the paper like a wig in a draught. The smoke went up grey and slow over the runner beans, twisting into the same shapes his pipe used to make.

The next morning the neighbour leaned over the fence and asked if I'd had a fire. Only tidying up, I said. I've since planted sweet peas in the soft patch where the parcel sat. They climb anything, given time, and I've told them nothing at all.