Colour realism tattoo of a yellow pencil appearing to pierce the side of a bald head above the ear, with red blood detail, and floral tattoos on the neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pencil piercing the side of a head

Realism · Other · Colour · Photo

A yellow pencil with a sharpened tip appears to pass through the side of a bald head above the ear, with red blood dripping from the wound. The pencil has smooth shading and a realistic sheen, while the blood is painted in soft red washes. Floral tattoos in pink and purple are visible on the neck below.

Realism Other Pencil Blood Head Ear Floral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Venn ran the coconut shy at the Michaelmas fair, and she had been trying to sell the same brass pencil sharpener for thirty years. Nobody bought it. Children tried to win it by knocking down tins, and the tins always stayed standing, which Mrs Venn took as a kind of verdict.

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Then in August a boy called Ferris Drake came round the back of the tent with a sketchbook under his arm and asked whether he could have the sharpener for nothing if he drew her something. She said no, then yes, because he had a kind face and a bad cough, and because nobody had ever drawn her before.

He sat on an upturned crate and sketched a yellow pencil, sharpened to a point so fine it looked like a needle. He pressed so hard the paper dimpled. When he finished he said the drawing wanted a wound. Mrs Venn laughed, but he turned the page and the pencil seemed to have passed clean through the paper and out the other side, as if it had been fired from the far margin.

That night a rook settled on the painted sign above the stall, and in the morning every tin on the shy lay flat in the mud. The sharpener was gone. On the counter lay a single curl of yellow shaving, thin as a fingernail, and beside it a note in careful capitals: TAKE YOUR TIME. I HAVE NOT FINISHED THE SHADING. Mrs Venn never sold a thing from that stall again. When the lights came on at dusk, anyone walking the midway could see the sign swinging on its chain, its pencil freshly pointed at the sky.