Seated man with traditional-style tattoos on both legs and arms, including a dagger, a framed portrait and a rose on the knee.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Legs with traditional tattoos and a framed portrait

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A seated man in a grey vest and blue trainers shows tattoos covering both legs and forearms. On the left shin is a framed portrait of a woman, and a dagger with red accents sits on the right shin, with a rose-like motif on the left knee. The shading is mostly black and grey, with red, pink and green colour added in places.

Traditional Forearm Upper arm Calf Other Rose Portrait Dagger Spider web Flower Sleeve Woman

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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

Mrs Okonedo came in on a Tuesday with the portrait wrapped in a bread bag, which told me she had not wanted to be seen carrying it. The oval frame was gilt gone brown at the corners, and the woman inside had the sort of chin you see on every girl on the Lewes Road who ever tried to look severe for a photographer. I asked her price. She said the picture was not for sale, only for keeping, and would I hold it a week.

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I hung it behind the counter beside the dagger a sailor left as surety in 1961 and never came back for, its hilt rubbed pink where someone had once polished it with rouge on a rag. The calendar opposite had a rose printed on it, and damp had taken the petals off one side. Between the two, the shop began to look less like a pawnbroker's and more like a parlour where people came to decide what they could not afford to lose.

Mrs Okonedo returned every Tuesday for seven weeks and paid one shilling, then sixpence, then a penny she counted out of a tin. She never took the portrait home. On the eighth week she did not come, and I sat with the ledger open, unsure whether I was waiting for the money or for her. Then a girl of about nine walked in with the same chin and asked whether her gran's picture was ready.

I wrapped it in the same bread bag, which was all I had, and watched her carry it out into the rain with both arms around it, the way you hold something you have been trusted with.