Black and grey traditional tattoo of a skull with flowers and leaves growing from its top, shaded with dotwork, on a limb.

Skull with flowers in traditional style

Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A skull with a stippled, dotted shadow sits at the base of the design, with its teeth and eye sockets outlined in bold black lines. Three stylised flowers with scalloped petals and spiky leaves grow out of the top of the skull, drawn with heavy outlines and dot-shaded fills. The tattoo is rendered entirely in black ink and grey tones against pale skin, with partial lettering and another tattoo visible at the edges of the frame.

Traditional Dotwork Other Skull Flower Leaves Teeth Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had worked nights on Ward 7 for eleven years and knew the sounds of the building the way other people knew their own houses. At ten past three the lift shuddered, the drip stands ticked, and somewhere past the nurses' station a radio murmured the football scores to nobody. Bed 14 was quiet. Mr Okafor had asked for the blind open so he could see the car park lights, and she had left it that way.

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The skull was propped against the water jug on his bedside locker. His granddaughter had drawn it on the back of a discharge leaflet in biro, gone over the lines again with a felt tip, and then, because she was seven and thought it looked lonely, given it flowers: three dandelion heads on stalks like clenched fists, leaves spiking out like something from a bad dream. "Grandad says it's for the garden," she had told Ruth, "when he's better." Ruth had not known what to say, so she had said it was lovely, which it was.

At half past four his call bell chimed and she went in with the torch. He was awake, one hand flat on the sheet, watching the ceiling tiles as though counting them. "The flowers," he said. "They always want the sun. Put them where the sun is."

She moved the leaflet into the window light, where the grey dawn was just beginning to silver the car park. The drawing held its shape against the glass, its black lines bold, its dotted shadows soft as dust. Ruth tucked the sheet under his chin and thought about seeds, and how little they needed.