Colour tattoo of a seated pin-up woman with red hair and a polka dot dress, resting on a gramophone, on an upper arm in a traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pin-up woman on a gramophone on the upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo of a seated pin-up woman with red hair, a polka dot dress and high heels, her chin resting on one hand. She sits on a vintage gramophone with its horn partly visible at the lower left. The shading is smooth and soft, with warm skin tones, blue and grey dress tones and a dark outline.

Traditional Upper arm Pin-up Woman High heel Red hair

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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

You take the late shift on Ward 9 because nobody else wants the hours between two and five, and because the storeroom at the end of the corridor has a gramophone under a sheet. Mrs Okafor from pharmacy says it came in with the effects of a patient who died in March, a box of old ninety-eight records and a note in careful blue ink: play the blue one when the lights go down. You find it. The label reads Lil Dunmore, Your Sweetheart Sings, and the paper sleeve smells of face powder.

Keep reading

You wind the handle and set the needle, and the room fills with crackle and a woman's voice pitched a little too high. Down the corridor the buzzer goes on bed twelve. You leave the record playing and walk. Mr Haddow in bay three wants water. He tells you his wife danced to this exact song at the Palais in 1952, and that she is sitting in the chair by his bed, though the chair is empty and you can see the vinyl seat cracked where no one has sat for weeks. You nod, check his drip, and say you will bring her a cup of tea as well.

When you get back the record has stopped. The turntable still turns, slowly, the arm resting in the groove. On the sleeve someone has pencilled a small figure perched on the gramophone horn, polka dots on her dress, one heeled foot swinging, her chin propped on one hand as if she is waiting for her cue. You lift the needle and the voice comes back mid-sentence, as though it never paused at all.

At five the day staff arrive and you hand over the notes. There is nothing in them about the gramophone. You lock the storeroom, but when you look back through the little wired window the record is spinning again, and the blue dress on the sleeve catches the corridor light as if someone has just stood up to leave.