Neo-traditional flash design of a woman with flowing red hair, a golden skull, a raven and dark roses, drawn with bold outlines and rich colour.

Red-haired woman with skull and raven

Neo-trad · Colour · Flash

A woman with long, wavy red hair and blue skin gazes to one side, with gold eyes and a small gold skull at her brow. Below her, a large golden skull rests among the hair, with a black raven perched on its right side, and dark grey roses and pink sprigs of blossom frame the figure. The bold dark outlines, smooth shading and warm parchment-toned background give the piece a rich, illustrative finish.

Neo-trad Woman Skull Raven Rose Flower Portrait Hair

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 frost has held the top field since November, and when the plough finally bites in February it turns up a skull the colour of old honey. You kneel in the mud with your gloves off and wipe it clean with your sleeve. Nobody on the farm has ever owned a golden skull. Your grandfather would have said it was a sheep's, stained by the peat, and gone back to the tractor. You don't believe him, because the jaw is whole and the teeth are bright as coins.

Keep reading

The raven arrives before the tea is cold, settling on the gate post as if it had been sent for. It watches you carry the skull into the kitchen. Wrapped in a tea towel on the table, the skull seems to look past you toward the window, where the hills go blue with dusk. The raven drops onto the sill and taps the glass twice, the way the vicar taps the lectern before he says something that matters. You have lived here thirty years and never once seen a raven come this close to the house.

That night you dream of a woman standing in the hedgerow with red hair spilling down to her knees, her eyes the same gold as the bone. She says nothing. She only lifts one hand and points at the stone wall where the dead roses once grew beside the byre. In the morning, frost has bloomed in pale pink along the stones, and the raven is gone.

You carry the skull back to the top field at dusk and dig where the furrow is softest, the spade ringing once against something harder than stone. The raven lands on the fence post above you and waits without a sound. When you look up, the earth you have turned has gone black and sweet, and along the wall a single dark rose of frost is opening, as though the field has decided what it owes you. You walk home without looking back, and the bird follows you all the way to the gate.