Neo-traditional tattoo of a silhouetted couple dancing inside an ornate cameo frame with blue gems, on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Silhouetted couple in an ornate frame on thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A black silhouette of a man bowing over the hand of a woman in a full-skirted gown fills an oval space at the centre. The surrounding frame has grey shaded scrollwork and two small blue gemstones at the top and bottom. The design is set against pale skin and sits centrally on the thigh.

Neo-trad Thigh Couple Silhouette Frame Gemstone Scrollwork Cameo

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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

Hold still. The scissors don't care whether your nose itches, and Mrs Pardoe will not pay two shillings for a profile with a twitch in it. You are perched on the high stool at the back of Foxley's studio in Haddley Market, the blind half down against the June sun, and the card is already pinned to the board. Your mother taught you to cut without drawing first. Her hands never shook either.

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Mr Pardoe came in on the Thursday, cap in both fists, and asked for something he could hang above the piano. He wanted himself and his wife at the Corn Exchange dance, the year they were married, the moment he bent to kiss her knuckles and she pretended to be embarrassed. He could not describe her face, only the skirt. Forty yards of taffeta, he said, and laughed the way men laugh when they have stopped being sure they are allowed to.

So you cut the skirt first. You let the blades go round the hem in long, slow bites, wide enough that it will swing like a bell when you lift the card to the light. His shoulders take three snips. The hands you leave until last, because hands are where a silhouette tells the truth, and the small gap between his lips and her fingers is the whole story. You hold your breath through it.

When you lift the paper it is right. Mr Pardoe takes it to the window and tilts it so the edge of the bow catches the light and goes white. That's her, he says, and you let him have it, though you have never once seen her face.