Black and grey fine line tattoo of a seated, draped figure with bowed head beside a bare tree, inside a stippled circle on a forearm.

Seated figure beneath a tree in a circle

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A draped figure sits with head bowed and one arm resting on a raised knee, with a bare, branching tree behind. The figure is drawn in crisp single-line outlines, while the circular backdrop and ground are built up with dense stippled dotwork. The piece is rendered entirely in black ink and grey tones on the forearm.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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I'm writing this on the back of the last handbill because the ink in the office has run dry, same as everything else since the council took the lease on the field. You'll have heard the big top goes to the scrapman on Friday. Mum wanted me to keep the backcloth, the painted one with the round moon and the dead ash tree, but there's no van big enough and no one left to unroll it for.

Yesterday I sat with it on the sawdust for an hour. Grandad painted it in 1961 with a dip pen and a jar of Indian ink, because the paints cracked in the damp. He stippled every dot of the ground with the blunt end of a hatpin, a thousand little knocks. The woman at its centre he drew in one unbroken line. She sits under the tree with her head down and one arm across her knee, a length of cloth pooling round her feet, and Grandad always said she was waiting for the band to finish, not grieving. I never believed him.

Last night the wind got under the canvas and lifted the corner so the lamp caught her face. Bent over, with not a flower left on the branches, but he'd drawn a few small ones at her feet anyway. I folded the cloth round her carefully, the way you'd cover someone asleep, and went home. Come on Friday if you can. Bring the hatpin. We'll decide together what gets kept.

Love, Nell

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