Red pencil drawing on tracing paper of a figure wearing a tall ornate headdress and tinted sunglasses, with one hand raised near the mouth, shown as a possible tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red pencil sketch of a headdressed figure in sunglasses

Colour · Flash

The drawing shows a figure in profile wearing a tall, ornate headdress with a central raised emblem and geometric detailing, plus large tinted sunglasses. The lines are fine and sketched, with soft shading on the face and lips and some hatching in the headdress. It is drawn in a single orange-red ink or pencil on pale tracing paper, with a red pencil placed at the left edge of the frame.

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 tracing paper had gone soft at the corners from three weeks of Mr Okafor's thumbs, and Ruth could still smell the ink on it when she came in on the Monday, before the kettle was on. The brief was pinned above the light box: copy the crown exactly, the disc at its centre, the stepped geometry running down either side like the teeth of a comb, and leave the rest to the sitter. Nobody had said who the rest was.

Keep reading

She worked in red pencil because the master had always insisted on it. Blue, he said, was for things that might be forgiven; red was for things that had to be right the first time. The pencil had been sharpened so often with a Stanley knife that it was barely the length of her thumb. She laid the sheet over the source print and followed the hatching in the headdress line by line, the little raised emblem coming up under her hand like a coin pressed into mud.

On the Thursday the light box showed her what she had missed. Under her tracing, faint as a bruise, lay older lines: a second set of shoulders, and a lens-shaped gleam on the tinted glass that she had taken for a reflection. Mr Okafor had drawn the piece twice, once for the client and once, she understood now, for himself. He had buried the second version under the first so that anyone copying it would never quite get it right.

She did not trace it. She sharpened the red pencil down to nothing, pressed the last sliver against the paper and drew the crown the way it had been drawn in the first place, the emblem a fraction off centre, because that was where his hand had always wanted it.

More like this

Red pencil sketch of a neo-trad tattoo design showing a sugar skull woman with pinned curls, a profile of a man with a quiff, and a Vigilante script banner.
Sugar skull woman and profile man flash
Black ink dotwork drawing of the Nefertiti bust in profile with a stippled headdress and ornate lace-like collar, shown on white paper held between fingers.
Nefertiti bust drawing in dotwork
Black ink flash drawing of a woman's portrait with a flower crown, braided hair, crescent moon earring and geometric collar, in a neo-traditional style.
Female portrait with flowers and geometric collar
Black and grey pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a woman's face framed by roses, with a skull and thorned stems below, in a realistic style.
Woman, roses and skull pencil design
Black ink drawing on white paper of a serene Buddha face framed by a mandala, a lotus and five moon phases, in a flash design style.
Buddha with lotus and moon phases drawing
Black and grey pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a woman with sugar skull style face make-up, peonies in her hair and a jewelled necklace, in a neo-traditional style.
Woman with peonies and sugar skull make-up design
Hand-drawn neo-traditional tattoo design of a woman's face framed by a mandala of red spades and hearts, shown on paper with no body placement visible.
Woman's face within a red and black mandala
Black ink pen drawing of an ornate elephant head filled with dotwork and mandala-style patterns, drawn on a sketchbook page; it is a tattoo design, not shown on skin.
Ornate mandala elephant head in pen
Black line drawing of a woman in a headband with curly hair, framed by two open roses and an arched border of circles, shown as a tattoo design on paper.
Woman portrait with roses design
Red pencil tattoo design of a woman's face framed by a rose, leaves and vines, with a hand over her head, in a neo-traditional style.
Woman's face with roses and a hand
Pencil sketch design of a woman in a feathered headdress with a large peony flower and a skull, drawn as a tattoo design.
Feathered headdress woman with peony sketch
Realistic coloured tattoo of an Egyptian queen in a striped headdress with an ankh and pyramids, with an Eye of Horus below, on the inner forearm, shown beside its pencil sketch.
Egyptian queen and Eye of Horus forearm

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