Purple line drawing of a skull decorated with roses, vines and a small figure, with banners reading At the end of the day we can endure much more than we think we can.

Skull with roses and quote banners

Colour · Flash

A single-colour purple line drawing of a skull filled with roses, vines, a cross and a small seated figure. Two curved banners above and below carry the words At the end of the day, we can endure much, more than we think we can. The fine linework sits on a cream background, with the skull centred and the banners framing it.

Skull Rose Vine Quote Banner Cross Figure Sugar skull

Find an artist for this

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

Mae had the banner half painted when the wind off the Humber took the ladder out from under her. It wasn't far, a foot at most, but it reminded her that the fair was a thing that moved and never a thing that stayed put. Below her Dennis was cursing at the generator, and the ghost train's skull mouth gaped over the car park, its pink teeth chipped from three seasons of Whitsun rain.

Keep reading

The painted skull had been her grandmother's idea. Nan had sketched it on the back of a betting slip in 1961, roses growing out of the eye sockets, a little man in a waistcoat perched on the crown like a king on a throne of bone. Nobody had ever asked what the words were meant to say. They were a line Nan's mother used to murmur over the wash tubs, and Mae had never heard it said without a sniff.

She climbed back up. The lettering wanted to lean, so she snapped a chalk line against the sky and followed the curve of the banner. At the end of the day, she wrote. Her hand shook until she made herself breathe out. We can endure much. The rain came sideways, and the lights along the Waltzer flickered on one by one, like a row of people deciding to stay.

At dusk she walked the ground with a torch, past the candyfloss van and the shuttered rifle range, and found Dennis on the caravan steps with two mugs of tea going cold. More than we think we can, she finished out loud, and he laughed at her for it, then handed her a mug anyway.