Greyscale pencil drawing of a side-view skull whose cranium is filled with carved gothic tracery and acanthus-style foliage, with two drawing pens below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic skull with gothic tracery

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A realistic side-view skull is drawn in pencil, with the cranium replaced by an ornate gothic window pattern of trefoil tracery framed by scrolling acanthus leaves. The skull has soft graduated shading, detailed teeth and a sharp highlight along the cheekbone and jaw. Two drawing pens rest in the lower left of the page on a plain light background.

Realism Skull Ornament Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bishop's man came up the lane on the third morning of frost, asking for the drawing. Walter Coe said there was no drawing, and the boy sweeping dust off the lodge floor knew he was lying, because the sheet was pinned to the wall behind the bench where anyone could see it. A skull in profile, shaded so soft it looked like it might breathe, its top opened like a shutter and a trefoil window cut into the space where the thinking ought to go. Acanthus leaves curled round the rim like frost on a pane.

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The commission had been for a tomb in the south aisle. Bishop Ferrars wanted his likeness in alabaster, lying still with his mitre at his shoulder, and he had asked for something to sit above the head. Walter gave him the window instead. He worked two nights on it with a pair of drawing pens, the fine one for the tracery and the heavier one for the shadow under the jaw, and he kept the lamp turned low so the boy could not see his hands shake when he got to the teeth.

The bishop's man took the sheet down in the end and rolled it under his arm. Next morning Walter was gone to Peterborough with his tools in a canvas roll, and the bench was bare except for the two pens, left where the drawing had been, their nibs still wet with ink.

Years later the boy, grey at the cuffs and master of his own yard, bought a cottage on the Stamford road and found a roll of vellum behind the lath of the scullery wall. The trefoil had been cut through the plaster, a small clean window, and each morning the low sun came across the sink and laid a clover of light on the flagstones for as long as the house stood.