Black and grey traditional tattoo of a skull with roses, palm trees and a sunset over waves, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull with roses and palm trees on a thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A skull is filled with three roses along its upper edge, with a sunset, two palm trees and rows of sea waves inside the cranium and jaw area. Bold outlines are combined with solid black fill, fine hatching and stippled dotwork shading across the roses and the sky. The design is shown in black and grey on pale skin, filling most of the frame with the lower strands of the skull's hair-like lines trailing off to the bottom edge.

Traditional Blackwork Thigh Skull Rose Palm tree Sunset Sea Wave

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Kieran,

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The lift was out again so I walked up all fourteen floors with the shopping, and I stopped on the landing by the window like you used to when you were little, counting the cranes. The council painted the stairwell grey last month, and somebody has been at it since with a biro. Nothing rude. Mostly roses, big blowsy ones like the ones Dad grew by the bins before they put the car park in. Mrs Okafor says it's the lad from number nine, the one who draws on the back of his hand at the bus stop.

You'd like the new one by the bin chute. He's done a skull, roses crowding the top of it, and inside the skull a sunset going orange into pink, with two palm trees leaning over the edge and rows of waves stacked up where the jaw should be. It looks like the postcards your gran kept from Tenerife, only somebody has squeezed the whole holiday into a head. Yesterday I stood in front of it with the bags cutting into my fingers and thought it was the nicest thing on the estate.

Anyway. The rota says you're on the rig until the twentieth. Eat something green. Ring on Sunday, not Saturday, because Saturday is bingo and I won't answer for anybody.

Love you, Mum.

P.S. I've told the lad from number nine that my son is at sea and he said to tell you the palm trees are his favourite bit. I said he'd better not be lying to his nan.