Neo-traditional tattoo of a woman with waved hair and orange earrings, holding a fan with a hand and eye design, on an upper arm.

Portrait of a woman with a fan on the upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A greyscale portrait of a woman with side-swept, waved hair and orange drop earrings fills the upper arm, with a large open fan and a hand holding it below. The linework is bold and outlined, with soft grey shading on the face and hair. Orange and dark orange accents on the earrings and fan add colour against the grey tones.

Find an artist for this

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

The Lyric Hall on the harbour front has been shut since the war, but on Thursdays Mrs Abernethy still unlocks the side door for the old crowd, and you go in anyway, because the fish market has nothing to offer a man of your years except its smell. You sit in the back row where the velvet has worn down to the cloth. Someone has left a folded fan on the seat beside you, painted with a sailing barque, and you know without looking whose it is.

Keep reading

Nell Varley danced the last season before the hall closed. She came off the Liverpool boat with one trunk and a reputation she never bothered to explain. Her hair was set in the tight waves the girls copied from the pictures, and she wore orange paste drops that caught the stage lamps like a struck match. She kept her face still while the band played, and the fan did all her talking, opening and closing like a slow argument she was winning.

The night the chandler's boy went missing off the mole, she took you by the sleeve in the wings and pressed a card into your palm with a drawn eye on the back. "Look at what the sea keeps," she said, "and it'll keep looking back." You laughed. You were twenty. Two days later the boy turned up in Grimsby with a story nobody believed, and Nell had gone south with the fair.

Now the fan lies on your knee, its ribs gone yellow, and you run a thumb over the little painted barque. Mrs Abernethy dims the lights. You open the fan halfway, the way Nell taught you, and the whole room seems to lean in to watch you not look at the door.

More like this

Colour traditional tattoo of a pin-up woman with bangs, a blue feather fan and teal clouds across an upper arm and shoulder.
Pin-up woman with feather fan on upper arm
Colour traditional tattoo on an upper arm of a 1920s-style woman in a red headband with peacock feathers, pearls and a red rose with a black centre.
Flapper with peacock feathers and rose on upper arm
Black and grey traditional pin-up tattoo of a woman in a headscarf and hoop earring, with a spider web on her shoulder, on the outer thigh.
Pin-up woman with spider web on a thigh
Colour tattoo on an upper arm showing an Art Nouveau woman in profile holding pink flowers, set within a round floral frame in neo-traditional style.
Art Nouveau woman with flowers on an upper arm
Colour traditional tattoo of a woman with a feathered headpiece, pearls and red roses on the outer thigh.
Woman portrait with roses on a thigh
Sketch-style tattoo of a woman's head and shoulders with swept-up hair on the inner forearm, shaded in grey and black with touches of red.
Vintage woman portrait sketch on a forearm
Neo-traditional tattoo of a woman's face with swept dark hair and yellow scroll accents, on the upper arm.
Woman's face portrait on upper arm
Black and grey geisha portrait tattoo with a flower hair ornament on the back of a hand, with smoky swirling shading on the forearm above.
Geisha portrait tattoo on the back of a hand
Realism tattoo of a woman in a pirate hat holding a pistol, shown in black and grey with blue accents across the upper arm and shoulder.
Pirate woman portrait on upper arm
Traditional colour tattoo of Medusa with teal and yellow snakes wrapped around her head, on an upper arm.
Medusa portrait with snakes on upper arm
Neo-trad tattoo on the outer thigh of a woman with pearl headwear and drop earrings, holding a red anatomical heart beside a black feather.
Woman holding a heart on a thigh
Neo-trad tattoo of a dark-haired pin-up woman hugging her knees, her legs covered in blue tattoo designs, on the outer thigh.
Pin-up woman with blue tattooed legs on a thigh

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.