Thigh with a coloured portrait of a woman framed by flowers, a black and grey sailing ship in a rope border, and a small teal lotus with pink characters above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Portrait, ship and lotus tattoos on a thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A thigh shows three separate tattoos: a coloured portrait of a woman framed by flowers and leaves on the outer side, a black and grey sailing ship inside a rope border below it, and a small lotus with pink characters above it on the inner thigh. The portrait and flowers use soft shading and warm colour, while the ship is rendered in grey shading with fine outlines. The lotus is flat with teal water beneath it, and the composition runs diagonally down the leg against a dark tiled wall.

Traditional Botanical Thigh Portrait Woman Flower Ship Rope Lotus Water Character Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

"Mind the rope, it's older than your mother and it still pulls," said Old Ansel, tapping his pipe against the side of the hoopla stall. The children shuffled closer, because the lamps were coming on over the dodgems and nobody wanted to be left out of the story.

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"There was a girl called Marjorie who ran the coconut shy at Coldharbour fair. She had a painted barque on a rope hung round her caravan door, a little three-master her grandfather had carved, and every night she tied the rope and every morning she untied it, so the ship would be ready to go. Her mother used to say a ship that never leaves is just a pretty piece of wood."

He paused and let the generator hum fill the gap. "The summer the fair stopped in Dorset, the water tank for the goldfish game went green, and a lotus came up in it. Nobody planted it. White flower on teal water, and pink letters painted on the banners that nobody could read. Marjorie said it was a sign. The ride men said it was algae, and they argued about it until the first frost."

"So what happened?" asked a small boy in a yellow anorak.

Ansel untied the rope from the arm of his chair, slowly, and held it up. "She cut it and sailed. Took the lotus in a jam jar on the seat beside her. Some say she's still down on the coast at Lyme, selling coconuts to the gulls." He coiled the rope over his knee, and the lamps flickered on one by one.