Pencil sketch of a tattoo design showing a horned skull with a pink rose, leaves, pearl strands and a small bird, with a pencil beside it.

Skull and pink rose tattoo sketch

Neo-trad · Mixed · Flash

A pencil sketch of a horned skull with a pink-shaded rose over its left side, with leaves and a small songbird perched on the right. Fine pencil linework and light shading build the skull and petals, with loose pink wash on the rose and beaded chains and a pendant hanging below. The design is shown on a pale background with a pencil lying at the lower right.

Neo-trad Botanical Skull Rose Bird Leaves Pearl Horn Pendant Feather

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 cabin of the Patience smelled of paraffin and wet rope when you found the sketchbook wedged behind the stove, its cover swollen from three winters of condensation. Your uncle Ray had never been a man for drawing, so you sat on the bunk and turned the pages slowly. Skull after skull, each one dressed differently: a rose tucked against the cheekbone, a feather curling up from the brow, strings of seed pearls looped like the ones your nan kept in a biscuit tin under the sink.

Keep reading

He had been dead a fortnight. You took the book up to Hythe Bridge lock, where Gwen, the keeper, had known him for forty years. Her thumb was stained green from the gates. She held a page to the window and tapped a horned skull with pink wash bleeding into the petals. "He drew that the week before he moored up for good," she said. "Said the little bird on the right was waiting on him to finish the chain."

That evening you sharpened the pencil he had left on the roof with your penknife, and the shavings curled onto the wet tarpaulin. You worked by the lamp until the pearls ran off the bottom of the page and down the margin, one bead at a time, until the pendant hung where he had meant it to. A wren landed on the tiller, cocked its head at the page and then at you, and did not fly off until you had drawn the last link.

In the morning the pencil was gone from the roof. The wren was not. It sat on the lock beam with its feathers puffed against the cold, watching the water go through the gates, as if it had been paid in full.