Nefertiti bust drawing in dotwork

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A profile bust of Nefertiti drawn in black ink, with the striped headdress and cobra-style detail rendered in dense stipple. The face and neck use fine linework and dots for shading, and the lower collar is filled with a detailed mandala-like pattern. The drawing is on white paper, with a black pigment fine liner pen lying across the top right corner.

Dotwork Fine line Headdress Profile Portrait Collar Mandala

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the gull by your boot, he has been waiting on my crusts since breakfast. You want the tale of the painted lady in the chandler's window? Then hush. Her headdress was stippled dot by dot by a clerk called Tobias Quill, who could not sleep for the tide slapping the harbour wall, so he counted the slaps instead, one speck of ink for each.

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He worked by a fish-oil lamp with a pen the chandler had brought back from Lisbon, and he gave the collar a pattern like the doilies his mother crocheted, each loop closed tight so the sea could not get in. Every night he added another ring, and every morning the ring was still there, which pleased him more than anything had in years. The dotwork grew so thick across the brow that folk said you could hear it hum if you held your ear to the paper.

Then came the March gale. The boats were stripped of their tarpaulins and the quay ran like a river, and when the sky cleared Tobias found his drawing lying face down in a puddle, the ink run into grey mist. He dried it on the stove, shaking, and the only dots left were the ones along the jaw. The chandler kept it in the window anyway, and that's where it hangs now, half a face and a full collar, still counting the waves. Mind your step on the way out, the boards are wet.