Two Medusa design sketches in a sketchbook, one in red pencil linework and one shaded in grey, with snakes wound through the hair.

Medusa sketches in a sketchbook

Neo-trad · Mixed · Flash

Two open sketchbook pages show a Medusa head with a woman's face framed by coiled snakes and flowing hair. The left page is drawn in red pencil outline with no shading, while the right page uses grey pencil shading and red accents around the eyes and hair. Both compositions are centred on the face and fill the page, with snakes curling around the head and shoulders.

Neo-trad Snake Face Hair Sketch Woman

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The red pencil was the one thing I kept from the tin when Dad sold the van, so I have been drawing with it on the back seat of the 47 bus for a month, where nobody can read over my shoulder. This week it is always her. Medusa, from the Greek myths book we had in Year Nine, the one nobody wanted to be. Every time I get her jaw right, the snakes go slack and sulk along the margin like wet rope, and I rub the lines out with my thumb until the paper goes grey and furry.

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Mr Okafor, who runs the Thursday life class at the community centre, saw the page and said the outlines were too polite. He said I was drawing a woman who wanted forgiving. So I went home and did the other side of the spread in grey, all shadow, and gave her a red flush at the eyes, as if she had been crying or had been lit from inside by something she was not sorry about.

Sunday night the snakes finally came right. I stopped trying to make her look down and let her look straight out past the edge of the page at whoever was holding the book. The lines went quick and certain, the way they do when you have stopped checking. By morning there was a smear of red across the heel of my hand, and the gorgon was staring at me from the kitchen table as if she had been waiting to be asked.

I didn't show Mr Okafor the grey page. I showed him the one with the bare red line, and he tapped it once and said, "Now she's the one doing the looking."