Pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a woman's face split down the middle, with one side as a realistic eye and the other as a decorated sugar skull with scrollwork.

Half woman, half sugar skull portrait

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a woman's face with long hair, half realistic and half sugar skull. The realistic eye and cheek sit within a lace-edged eye patch on one side, while the other side has a decorative skull with dotted, scrolled and lace-like details. The graphite shading is in greys with soft gradients and dark accents, and the design is centred on a plain pale background.

Sugar skull Woman Skull Portrait Hair Eye Scroll Dot Lace Day of the dead

Find an artist for this

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

Dear Marisol,

Keep reading

The boat didn't come on Tuesday, so I have had three days to finish the mask you asked about, and I have finished it badly. Mamá would have laughed. The lace on the left keeps running into the scrolls, and I scorched the sugar twice over the stove in the net shed because the wind kept blowing damp under the door. Still, the skull is ready. I painted the dots along the brow the way she taught us, one for every year someone on the island has gone out on the water and not come back.

Mr Pascoe at the harbour office says there are eleven dots now, counting the Hallows boy from last spring. I counted twice. I did not paint a twelfth for Papa, though I thought about it for a long time. He came home from the Atlantic every time, didn't he? So I left that space bare for the next storm.

The islanders keep marigolds in tins on the windowsills, orange as lamp flames against all that grey. On the first night of November we carry them up to the chapel and lay them along the wall, and the children run between the candles without anyone shouting at them. Last year Father Ruan asked why we bother with bright colour when the dead can't see it. Nan told him the dead see it well enough. It's the living who forget to look.

I am sending you the drawing rather than the stencil, because the stencil lives in Nan's drawer and I won't trust it to the post. Write back before the next boat, and tell me the sea has been kind to you.

Love, Inés