Black and grey pen drawing of a spotted mushroom with cross-hatched shading, shown as a tattoo design sketch with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Spotted mushroom pen drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A single mushroom with a domed cap covered in round spots and a thick stem, drawn in black ink on a white background. The cap and stem are shaded with dense cross-hatching and curved strokes that suggest volume and a light source from the upper right. The composition is centred and isolated, with the mushroom filling most of the frame.

Mushroom Spots Stem Cap

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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

You find it on the ninth-floor landing, pushing up through the lino seam beside the bin chute where the damp has gone soft. Its cap is the size of a dinner plate and freckled with round white spots, like someone flicked a paintbrush at it and then thought better of the rest. Mrs Okafor from 4B says it's the landlord's fault. Mr Pryce from the council says it's condensation and sends a leaflet. You scrape at it with a putty knife, bag what's left, and carry the bag down nine flights feeling as though you've done something respectable.

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Next morning there are two. By Friday there are seven, in a loose line along the skirting, and the spots on the nearest one look larger, as if they have swelled overnight to keep an eye on the corridor. You stop filing reports. Instead you bring a flask on the late shift and sit on the top step, where the light from the stairwell window comes in low from the right and lays a grey shadow down the stem, the way the cross-hatching does on the old pen drawings your grandad kept in a biscuit tin. The building ticks and sighs around you. Someone has taped a note to the door that says DO NOT TOUCH, and someone else has crossed out TOUCH and written LEAVE IT.

In March the council finally re-roofs the block and the landing is painted magnolia. You come up on your last shift to find the mushrooms gone, every one of them, leaving only pale rings on the lino like the ghosts of coffee cups. A single grey print of a sole leads from the bin chute to the stairs, and beside it, very small, a spotted cap no bigger than a button, turned carefully towards the lift.