Fine black line sketch of a small girl in a dress with her shadow beside her, on the upper back shoulder of a woman wearing a dark strap top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small sketched girl in a dress on a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A small figure of a girl in a short dress stands with her head bowed, drawn in loose black linework with light hatching on the skirt and shadow. The design sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade, with the woman's face out of frame and her dark brown hair falling to one side. The palette is black ink on warm skin against a pale background, and the composition keeps the tattoo as the clear focal point.

Fine line Shoulder Girl Dress Shadow Sketch

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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

Sit down by the stove, the lot of you, and mind the kettle. No, I'll not tell it quick. The girl came up Platform Two the winter the signal box burned, carrying a carpetbag nobody ever saw inside, and she stood under the clock with her head bowed like someone reading a letter she didn't want to finish.

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Stationmaster Ibbotson said she'd been waiting since the morning trains. Nobody came for her. The porter swept round her boots and she never once lifted her chin. But the strange thing, and I'll swear to it on my mother's hymn book, was her shadow. The low sun came through the glass roof and laid it long across the boards, hatched dark along the hem of her skirt, and it wasn't keeping time with her at all.

On the last train of the evening, the 6.52 for Carrick Moor, the shadow stood up off the platform like a coat shrugging on. It walked the length of the carriage, leaned on the window, and sat down opposite a man reading a newspaper folded in quarters. The train pulled out. The girl stayed where she was, slight and grey as pencil, her head still bowed towards the empty rails.

Ibbotson swept her up at closing, or thought he did. Next morning the bench was bare and there was a dark smudge of ash on the boards where the shadow had been. And that's why, when you're waiting for a train in this town, you keep your own shadow tied close by the heel. Now, who's asking for the next story?