Black ink tattoo of a woman silhouette in a dress, leaning back in an oval frame with scrolled corners, on the inner upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Silhouetted dancer in an oval frame on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a woman in a flared dress leans backwards with one leg kicked out and an arm raised near her head. The figure sits inside a thin black oval border decorated with curled scrolls at the top, sides and bottom. The image is in black ink only, shown on an arm in a denim sleeve against a plain indoor background.

Upper arm Silhouette Woman Dancer Dress Oval frame Scroll

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 lamps at the Gilded Hall were turned down low on Saturdays, because Mrs Pell said a dancer should be seen by her shadow and not her face. Nell Harker came every week in a green dress with a flared hem that swung out when she kicked. Nobody asked where she lived. The fiddler, Tom Okey, played faster whenever she laughed, and the floor learned to clear for her.

Keep reading

One night a stranger in a grey coat stood at the back by the coat hooks and did not dance. He watched Nell lean back until her hair brushed the boards, one leg thrown out, one hand lifted as if to catch a falling moth. When the music stopped he walked to the wall and held up a small oval frame of tin. Inside it was a black cut-out, the shape of a woman bent backwards, and the shape was dancing still.

Nell took the frame and looked at it a long while. Then she said, very politely, that she would dance once more for it, if the fiddler would play the slow reel. The room went quiet. She kicked, leaned, lifted her hand, and at the top of the turn her body slipped out of its own outline like a coat off a peg. The shadow on the wall went on turning. Nell stood with the lamplight on her plain, tired face.

The stranger bowed, hung the frame on a nail by the door, and went out into the fen mist. Mrs Pell swept the boards that night and found nothing on them but a dark mark where a heel had been. Every Saturday after that Nell still came in, and every Saturday the lamps were turned low so she could see her own shadow waiting on the far wall, dancing for both of them.