Two sketch-style tattoos on thighs: a left thigh with a woman's face, a sailing ship, a red rose and a bird, and a right thigh with a red-haired woman in black line and watercolour wash.

Sketch-style portraits on two thighs

Thigh · Mixed · Photo

The left image shows a tattoo of a woman's face in loose, sketched linework, with a sailing ship above, a red rose over one eye, a bird with outstretched wings, and handwritten script down the side. The right image shows a woman with red hair and a hand near her chin, drawn in fine black sketch lines with red and brown watercolour washes. Both pieces sit on the upper thigh and use a mix of black ink and colour accents.

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

Don't look at me like that, Ada. I've seen a gull take a whole kipper off a man's plate in Scarborough and never once say sorry. The Mary Kell taught me that much, the winter she limped in with her foremast gone and the rest of us stood on the quay in our oilskins, counting heads.

Keep reading

Her figurehead was a woman with a red rose pinned at her collar, carved by a Norwegian who drank his wages in the Ship and Anchor. When the sea took her port side, the mate, Tom Ainsley, went over the rail after a bosun's chair and came up with a black-backed bird in his fist, its wing hanging wrong. He nursed it in the galley for a week, named it Dunnock out of spite, and it would not eat unless the cook sang hymns at it.

Then came the scratching. Ainsley cut words into the bulkhead beside his bunk with a marlinspike, a line a night: some will swim, some will sink. He worked until the paint gave way and the letters showed pale as teeth. Nobody asked him what they meant. We found out the morning we raised the Humber, when the bird flew off and left a single red petal on his pillow, pressed flat as a letter.

I still keep that petal in my Bible, Ada. Ainsley never came back for it, and I never worked out which of us he meant to swim.

More like this

Traditional style tattoo of a man and a woman embracing in front of a red heart with blue-grey flowers, shown on skin in three repeated panels.
Couple embracing in a red heart
Black and grey forearm tattoo of a raven head above a human face in profile, with a small red beak accent and a dagger with a red blade at the lower left.
Raven and face with dagger on a forearm
Bold colour tattoo of a stylised woman with dark bobbed hair holding a cat, with a teal plant below, in Neo-trad style on the forearm.
Stylised woman with a cat on a forearm
Two colour tattoos in a neo-traditional style: a forearm portrait of a moustached man with lightning bolts and lettering, and an upper arm portrait of a bearded man in a paper boat hat with an eye and
Two colourful portrait tattoos on forearm and upper arm
Colour traditional tattoo of a pale-faced woman with blue hair and flowers in an orange frame, beside a red rose, on the upper thigh.
Pale-faced woman in a frame with a red rose
Colour neo-traditional tattoo on the upper arm showing a woman's face merged with a skull, with a butterfly wing over one eye and a Roman numeral clock behind.
Half skull and half woman face with clock on upper arm
Neo-traditional tattoo of a horned woman with glowing red eyes and a red and black backdrop, on the inner forearm.
Horned woman with red eyes on forearm
Neo-traditional tattoo of a moustached man in a bowler hat and a woman with pearls and earrings, beside a red rose, on an upper arm.
Man and woman portrait with rose on upper arm
Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a woman holding a crystal ball, with roses and a jewelled butterfly headpiece, on an upper arm.
Crystal ball woman and roses on upper arm
Colour traditional tattoo on an upper arm of a 1920s-style woman in a red headband with peacock feathers, pearls and a red rose with a black centre.
Flapper with peacock feathers and rose on upper arm
Neo-trad portrait of a 1920s style woman in an orange headband and teal feather headpiece, with pearl necklaces, tattooed on a calf.
Flapper portrait with feather headpiece on a calf
Two forearm photographs showing a black linework tattoo of a woman in profile wearing a fox head headdress, with teal accents, in dotwork and geometric style on the forearm, plus a hand and
Profile woman and fox headdress on forearm

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