Fine line sketch of a woman with flowers in her hair and a teal watercolour wash on the ribs, with a second dark tattoo and a navel piercing on the left side.

Sketched woman with flowers on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A woman's face and hair are drawn in thin black linework, wearing a crown of blue flowers and a small leafy detail, with one hand raised near the chin. A bold teal watercolour stroke runs diagonally beside the figure and a faint blue splash sits above the head. A dark tattoo of a fish or bird with an anchor is partly visible on the left side of the frame, and a navel piercing sits below it.

Fine line Ribs Woman Face Flower Hand Watercolour Anchor Fish

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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

Sit down on that bollard, the one with the gull mess, and don't fidget, because this is the true part. Nobody in Porthgarrow will tell you about Ada Penhale's brushes, but my mother could, and she never lied about anything except the price of fish.

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Ada kept a stall above the fish market, painting names on the hulls of boats that came in with nothing to show for the night. She had a way of drawing a face so fine you could count the lashes, and she would not paint a face for money unless the sitter had a story to pay with. One February a man climbed the steps with a sack of eels and a boy's school cap under his arm, and he asked her to paint his drowned brother into the harbour light. She said no. She said the sea keeps what it is given. Then she painted him anyway, a young woman in a crown of forget-me-nots, and the teal stroke she laid down beside her was the colour of the channel water on a clear morning.

Now here is the bit you will argue with me about. The next tide, the crown had gone from the paper and the flowers were floating in the harbour mouth, blue as a bruise going off. The man swore that was proof. Ada said it was only the paint running, and paint was never meant to hold anything for long.

Mind you, the anchor she inked on the margin still hangs on the wall above her empty stall, and the silver fish that swims under the moored boats at dusk still turns its head to look at you. It keeps watching long after the picture is dry.