Black and grey dotwork and line tattoo on the upper arm, showing a split face of a woman with a side bun and a dark helmeted mask inside a geometric diamond frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Split female face and helmet in a diamond frame

Geometric · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a woman's face on the left half and a dark helmeted mask on the right, divided down the centre and set inside a large outlined diamond frame with inner geometric lines. The linework is crisp and even, with stippled dotwork shading building up the shadows on the helmet and the hair. The design is entirely black ink on pale skin, and the diamond shape sits centrally on the outer arm with the frame cropping cleanly within the photo.

Geometric Dotwork Upper arm Face Helmet Mask Woman Geometric line Hair bun

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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

Dear Mags,

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Your letter found me on the night shift, folded inside my coat with a bus ticket and a bent cigarette. I've read it three times past the bins behind the Crown, where the lamps on Tanner Street go the colour of weak tea and the pigeons start up on the gasworks roof. You asked if I'm still sleeping days. I'm not. I'm still striking arcs on the rail sheds until four.

Last Thursday Dev came out to the cutting bay with a face like a shut door and said the new gaffer wanted my hair tucked away, on account of it catching in the grinder. I didn't argue. I pinned it up the way Gran used to, tight at the nape, and clipped the visor back on. The steel was hot and the shadows under the gantry were thick as ink, and I kept thinking how nobody can see a face under a helmet. Half of me was armour and half was just a girl with a sore neck, and the second half was doing all the work.

On the walk home the chip shop on Mill Row had its window lit up like a paper lantern, so I stopped to look at my reflection. Visor pushed up, one side of me plain as a Sunday, the other side dark glass and rivets. I laughed out loud, and a man with a dog crossed the road to avoid me.

Come up at Easter. I'll show you the sheds and the window. You can tell me which half is the real one.

Love, Nell