Black and grey pencil drawing of a geisha with a flowered parasol, a fan and cherry blossom, shown as a tattoo design rather than on skin.

Geisha with parasol and fan

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A woman in traditional dress with an elaborate flowered hairstyle holds a lace-edged fan and stands beneath a large parasol with a scrolling blossom pattern. The drawing uses fine graphite shading for the hair, fabric and clouds, with soft tonal gradation across the background. Cherry blossom clusters frame the lower edge and the right side of the composition.

Japanese Geisha Woman Fan Cherry blossom Kimono Cloud

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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

The blossom came down the lift shaft at six, as it always did, wrapped in the cold mesh that kept it alive for the trip up from the orchard decks. Nobody at Carrow Station had asked for cherry trees. Old Hesper had carried the first cutting up from Earth in a sealed jar, and now the whole ring of the habitat smelled faintly of rain on stone every morning.

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My job was the sunshades. Out past the spin line the mirrors threw their light across the cloud-decks, and the cloud-decks needed watching, because the seeding drones liked to clump over the blossom and drop their silver dust in the wrong place. I went out each shift on the outer spokes with a paper-thin parasol of carbon ribs, opened it over the drone bay, and let the wind carry the dust away from the trees. Hesper said it looked ridiculous, a grown adult holding a painted umbrella against the vacuum. I told her the vacuum had never once complained.

The turn came on a Tuesday. A drone swarm slid in under my shade, the fan-lens on my wrist flickered red, and for a moment the whole ring went dark except for the blossom, which glowed pale where the emergency lamps caught the petals. I folded the parasol shut, the way Hesper had taught me, and kept my hand low so the petals would not tear. The swarm drifted past, confused by the shadow, and went off toward the empty sector.

When the lights came back, Hesper was waiting at the lock with a bundle of fallen blossom cupped in her palms. She did not say well done. She pressed one pale flower into the ribs of my fan, where it stuck, and said the trees would outlast us both if we kept our shadows in the right place. I still have that petal. It is brown now, and folded like a letter nobody needed to finish.