Traditional tattoo of a skull filled with a stars and stripes pattern, framed by banners reading American Beauty and American Psycho, in red, black and blue on skin.

Skull with flag design and banners

Traditional · Mixed · Photo

A skull filled with a stars and stripes pattern sits inside a ring of two banners, one reading American Beauty and the other American Psycho. Bold black outlines, shaded tan tones and solid red and navy stars give it a classic traditional look. The design fills the frame with the banners curving around the skull.

Traditional Skull American flag Star Banner Script Stripe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The skull was Frank's idea, though he never admitted it. He came down the pier steps on the Tuesday with a cardboard tube under one arm and a cigarette he kept forgetting to light, and asked whether I could paint a flag into a skull without the stripes running off the cheekbones. I told him I could paint a flag into a bishop's mitre if the money was right. He unrolled his drawing across my trestle, pinned it with my palette knife and a jar of brushes, and I saw the two ribbons curling round the outside like a pair of sisters who had fallen out over a hat.

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American Beauty went on the top ribbon and American Psycho along the bottom. Frank had been reading the listings in the Odeon and thought the pair of them a good joke for the lads at the fish market. I said the lads would not get it. He said the lads would get the skull, and they did. I laid the red first, the lips of the eye sockets and the stripe along the jaw, then the stars in their little navy caps. The navy would not sit on the board, so I cut it with a drop of ink from Mrs Dunning's fountain pen, and it dried a shade darker than Frank wanted and exactly the shade I wanted.

The gala came and went. Frank hung the board outside the shooting gallery and sold more tickets than the strongman did all summer. Nobody read the ribbons properly. Children pointed at the grinning bone and asked whether it was real, and Frank told them it was the most honest thing on the whole pier.

Years later I saw the board leaning against the back wall of the Co-op, rained on, one star gone where the damp had got in. I carried it home under my coat and hung it over the kettle. The stripes still run straight across the bone, which is more than anyone can say for Frank.