Two matching black cameo silhouette tattoos in ornate frames on the upper thighs of a person, in a traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching cameo silhouette tattoos on thighs

Traditional · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

Two matching tattoos show a profile silhouette of a woman's head inside an oval cameo, framed by an ornate scrolled border with small dots above and below. The solid black silhouettes contrast with fine black linework and hatched shading in the frames. The image is a close, straight-on view of both thighs, with the two designs mirrored and placed at the same height.

Traditional Thigh Cameo Silhouette Profile Frame Ornament Scroll Dot Matching

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 grain, Ada, or the lady's nose will come out looking like a bishop's.' Mr Pryce set the shell on the lamp stand and tilted it until the light ran through the pale layer. I had been cutting cameos for three weeks and had only spoiled four.

Keep reading

The commission arrived in a brown envelope from Edgbaston: two profiles for the Harlow sisters, both cut from a single conch so the pair would match. Pryce drew the outline in pencil, turned the paper over, and drew it again backwards for the second. 'Mirror work,' he said. 'Every pair is one face looking two ways. You'll think you're making two things. You're making one thing twice.'

We spent a fortnight on the frames, scrolls like sea foam with dots of gilt at the head and foot. The silhouettes were the hard part. Pryce wanted them solid, no features at all, just the line of brow and lip against the ground, so the eye had to decide for itself who it was looking at. I kept cutting too deep and he kept saying, 'Let the stone keep something back.'

When the younger Miss Harlow came to collect, she held the two cameos up to the window, one in each hand, and turned them until the profiles faced each other across the gap. 'Which of us is she?' she asked. Pryce looked at me, and I said neither, not yet. She laughed, paid in silver, and took them both. I never learned whether she understood that the faces had been cut to look at one another, so that neither could turn without the other turning too.