Pencil sketch of a matryoshka doll with a smiling face and shaded rose blossoms across its body, drawn as a tattoo design on paper.

Matryoshka doll with roses sketch

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil and ink drawing of a matryoshka doll in a headscarf, with a smiling face, rosy cheeks and a bun-like hair detail. The lower body is filled with large shaded roses and leaves, with dotted shading around the edges and a scalloped hem at the base. The design is shown in black and grey on a plain sheet of paper, with a pencil and pen resting nearby.

Neo-trad Botanical Rose Leaves Headscarf Face Flower

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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

Dear Nadia, the man at the lost property hatch has stopped asking me to fill in his form, which I choose to read as a sign he thinks I am harmless. I have the doll with me, wrapped in your father's tartan scarf and wedged in my handbag between a packet of Polo mints and the timetable. I took it out on the 14:10 from Doncaster and counted the pieces twice, the way you used to, lining them up on the table under the window.

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There are six of them, and they open at the waist with a little twist. Lidiya bought the set at a Saturday market in Ryazan the year before she married, and she painted the roses on the largest one herself. Every bloom on that skirt is a slightly different shape, because she said a rose that looks copied is a rose nobody remembers. The smallest doll is no bigger than a walnut and has no face at all, only a dab of cream paint where a face should be.

Last night I found the reason. Inside the smallest doll, pressed flat against the wood, was a half ticket from Ryazan station, dated the spring of 1974, with a pencilled rose drawn on the back. Nothing else. I sat on the bed for an hour holding that walnut and thinking about how many journeys a thing like that can make before anyone thinks to open it.

I am posting the smallest doll back to you, with the ticket tucked in her hollow. Keep the roses turned outwards when you set them on the shelf, as she always did, so anyone walking past the window can see them. Ring me when they arrive. Your loving, impatient mother, Irina.