Pen drawing of a neo-traditional design with two skulls, layered roses, leaves and ornate scrollwork inside a curved frame, shown on paper beside a black fineliner.

Skull and roses neo-traditional design sketch

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A line drawing of a design featuring two skulls, one partly overlapping the other, set among large open roses and leaves. A heart and swirling scrollwork sit in an ornate frame at the top and sides. The bold black outlines are shaded with soft grey tones, and the design is shown in black and grey with no colour.

Neo-trad Skull Rose Heart Leaves Scrollwork Frame Flower Bead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Edwin had been told to finish the lintel drawing for the charnel house by Vespers, and the sheet on his desk was already spoiled by a drip of ink. Outside, fen mist sat low on the reeds. Prior Osric wanted two skulls, one tucked behind the other, because that was how the brothers had buried old Ralph and young Piers, who had shared a cell and a quarrel for forty winters.

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Edwin drew the roses first, because the prior liked roses and they were easy to get right. He shaded each petal with a fine nib, the way he shaded the initials in the psalter. The beads came next, a string looped across the frame like the rosary Ralph had worn to his last office. He drew Ralph's skull in front, its jaw open as if still arguing, and Piers's half hidden behind it, grinning at the back of his friend's head.

When he reached the scroll at the top, he found he had drawn a heart without meaning to, small and tidy, sitting where the abbey's motto should have gone. He looked at it for a long time. Then he left it, because the frame had room for only one thing and the heart was truer than the motto.

Prior Osric came at dusk, holding a lantern too close to the page. He said nothing for a while. Then he asked whether Edwin meant the heart as a rebuke. Edwin said no, it was only where the two of them had ended up. The prior rolled the sheet carefully and carried it off under his arm, and Edwin noticed the pen still uncapped on the desk, its ink drying into a small black bead.