A hand holding a cream canvas makeup pouch printed with black lettering, with a partly visible coloured tattoo on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Makeup pouch held over a wooden floor

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A hand holds a cream canvas pouch printed with black block capitals, with makeup brushes, a compact and an eyeshadow palette spilling from its open zip. The background is a dark wooden floor, and the photograph is shot from above. A partly cropped tattoo on the forearm shows red, yellow, green and black colour, but its design is too cut off to identify.

Forearm Hand

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

Third act, and Mrs Pargeter still has one eyelid to go, so I am on my knees on the boards with a sable brush the size of a teaspoon while the Duchess glares at me from the chaise as if I personally dimmed the lights. Sixteen years at the Ashcombe Palace and I have learned that a dresser's life is mostly crouching. Everything I own travels in a cream canvas bag that Gwen from props painted for me at Christmas. Black letters, a zip that snags if you rush it. She meant it as a joke, and the company still quotes it at me in the green room.

Keep reading

I carry a palette of ochres I bought in Leeds one wet February, a compact with a dent in its lid from the day the scenery came down, and three brushes so worn their bristles splay like a hedgehog's spines. Every night I tip the lot onto the floorboards to find the one I want. The wood is dark and tacky with a century of spilt tea, and every scrap of glitter ends up somewhere in the grain.

"Hold still, Mrs P," I say, and she does, which tells me she is frightened. Closing night is tomorrow. The Duchess dies on Monday, and so, in a way, does Mrs Pargeter's time with this company. Nobody has told her yet, and I am not the one who should.

I blend the edge with my little finger and step back. She blinks at me in the mirror, looking younger than she has any right to. I pick up the bag, tug the zip shut with a sharp little click, and set it on the shelf above the sink with its brushes inside and its rude words facing the room, where it will wait for Saturday.