Traditional style tattoo on the upper arm showing makeup brushes, a hand mirror, a lipstick and mascara inside a beaded oval frame, with a WARPAINT banner.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Makeup brushes and mirror banner on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A bold colour tattoo of makeup brushes, a round hand mirror, a red lipstick and a mascara wand, arranged inside a beaded oval frame. A ribbon banner across the lower part reads WARPAINT, and the bright red, yellow and blue fills sit within thick black outlines. The design is centred on the outer upper arm and photographed straight on against a plain background.

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

Mind the guy ropes, and sit where the lamp can reach you. I'll not shout, the generator's loud enough for both of us. Right, where was I. Ada Mollison kept the paint tent at Carrow's Travelling Fair for thirty-one summers, and she had a rule pinned above her jars of rouge: nobody goes into the ring with a bare face.

Keep reading

The night Hal Brennan came in, the strongman's hands were shaking so badly he couldn't hold the mirror. Word had come up the road that his brother's booth in Hull had been sold off for scrap, and Hal had been carrying that news all afternoon like a wet sack. Ada didn't ask him to talk. She took the little round hand mirror down from its nail, dusted it on her sleeve, and sat him on an upturned crate.

She worked fast. Blue along the lids, black where the lashes would be, a stripe of red on the lips the colour of a fire engine. The mascara wand went through his brows like she was combing a pony. "Warpaint, love," she said. "Not for them out front. For the walk back to your van, when nobody's looking and you've still got to be somebody."

He stood up straighter than she'd seen him stand in years. Then he tried to press two shillings into her palm, and she closed his fingers over the coins and told him to buy his brother a pint instead. Hal lifted the weights that night with a face as calm as a painted saint, and the crowd never knew a thing. Ada kept the mirror, and I'm told it still hangs in a tent in Lincolnshire, with the jars beneath it and the old rule still pinned above them.

More like this

Traditional style tattoo of a compass rose inside an ornate gold and black heart frame topped with a fleur-de-lis, on an upper arm.
Compass in a heart frame on an upper arm
Traditional tattoo of a red rose and an open gold pocket watch with a script banner, shown on an arm.
Rose and pocket watch on an arm
Black and grey neo-traditional tattoo on a forearm showing a Chi-Rho monogram in a shaded circle, with alpha and omega letters, laurel leaves, berries, a crown and scrollwork.
Chi-Rho monogram with laurel on a forearm
Traditional colour tattoo of a dark shark wrapped around a ship's wheel with a pink rose and green leaves, on the side of the body.
Shark and ship's wheel with rose
Colour traditional tattoo on a thigh of a red-haired mermaid with a green tail seated on a rope-wrapped anchor, framed by red, purple and dark roses.
Mermaid on an anchor with roses on a thigh
Traditional-style tattoo on an upper thigh showing a dagger over a banner reading Fear Cuts Deeper Than Swords, flanked by blue roses and dark leaves.
Dagger, banner and roses on a thigh
Black and grey hand with a blade through it and red drips of blood, tattooed on the upper arm and shoulder in a traditional style.
Hand and blade on upper arm
Traditional style colour tattoo on a forearm showing a red rose, a compass with a blue star, a rope and a tag reading Home is.
Compass, rose and luggage tag on a forearm
Black and grey Traditional style tattoo of octopus tentacles rising from engraved waves beneath stars and clouds, on an upper arm.
Octopus tentacles rising from waves on an upper arm
Traditional colour tattoo of a gramophone with red flowers and green leaves on a forearm.
Gramophone and red flowers on a forearm
Colour tattoo of an ornate heart with a mandala-style border and a sprig of leaves, placed on the outer thigh, in a neo-traditional style.
Ornate heart with leaves on a thigh
Black and grey shaded tattoo of a ship's wheel with a coiled rope and anchor, with compass star points, on a person's upper back.
Ship's wheel and anchor on the upper back

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.