Black and white blackwork design of a skull within interlaced knotwork, framed by a scalloped petal border.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and knotwork in a petal ring

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A circular design with a scalloped border of outlined petals surrounding a band of interlaced, knot-like strands. At the centre, a dark solid shape with two round eye openings suggests a skull. The linework is bold and even, with solid black areas and no shading or colour.

Blackwork Geometric Skull Knotwork Mandala Petal Circle Interlace

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

They argued for most of the evening about who had sat beside her, and then about her name, and by the time the urn in the Co-op hall had boiled twice nobody could agree on either. Mrs Calloway, they finally settled, had taught art for two terms before the school shut its east wing, and she had one rule that outlasted everything: never rub out a mistake, draw round it until it becomes the pattern.

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Pearl Dacre still had the sheet. She had kept it folded in a hymn book for thirty-one years, and when she opened it on the trestle table the paper was soft as cloth. A ring of petals ran round the edge, each one outlined twice, and inside them a band of string knotted over and under itself. In the middle sat a skull with two round holes for eyes and no nose, the hollow left blank on purpose. 'You draw what holds the thing together,' Pearl read aloud from the back, in Ruth's slanting hand, 'and you leave the open places where the seeing happens.'

Nobody spoke for a while. Then Tom Ashby, who had failed the course twice and once set fire to a bin, took a pencil from the jar and began to trace the outermost knot. His line wobbled, then steadied, and where the old strands had gone faint he went over them darker until the whole band seemed to hum under the strip lights. Someone laughed. Someone else went quiet. The knot closed back on itself where Ruth had left a loose end, the first unfinished thing anyone there had ever seen her leave.

When the caretaker came to lock up, they all stood in the dim hall and looked at the sheet on the table. Moonlight came through the high windows and found the paper, and the two empty eyes of the skull were the only thing still plain to see, watching them go out one by one through the door.