Coloured flash design of a white skull wearing a red fez and bow tie, with a tattoo machine and the word Geronimo on a gold banner, on a pale blue background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull with fez, bow tie and tattoo machine

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A white skull wears a red fez with a black tassel and a small number 11 on its front, and a red bow tie sits below its jaw. A tattoo machine crosses behind the skull on the right, and a gold scroll banner across the bottom reads GERONIMO. The bold black outlines and flat fills sit on a plain pale blue background, with the design centred in the frame.

Traditional Skull Bow tie Tattoo machine Banner Tassel

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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

The ladder creaks the same way it did in Doncaster, which is to say it complains about everything and then holds. You stand on the top rung with the big top breathing canvas around you, and below, the crowd is a rumour of wet coats and folding chairs. Someone has painted the tank blue again this season because the council wouldn't pay for water that looked like water. Your mother used to say the Fenwick and Dane Grand Travelling Marvel had never once run out of sawdust. It has now. In the corner where the sawdust used to be, there is a tarpaulin of sandbags and a hopeful little sign.

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Mr Abernethy is in the caravan with the tattoo gun he bought off a sailor in Hull, doing skulls on the roustabouts for a pound a go because the money went on the lions' feed. He still wears the red fez from the old ringmaster's photographs, though it has moths in it now. He told you once that every act needs a shout, something to say when the bottom drops out of the world, and that the Apache film men had it right. So you borrowed theirs. You never asked him whose name it really was.

The drum roll starts, thin and tinny from a speaker taped to a pole. You fold your arms, tuck your chin, and look down at the water you have agreed to believe in. Then you shout it, loud enough to startle a pigeon off the rigging, and step off into the air.

The water is a foot deep and tastes of chlorine and paint. You come up spluttering, one shoe gone, and the six people in the front row are clapping like it is a full house. Somewhere above you, a sandbag thumps against the tarp and nobody minds at all.