Colour neo-traditional sugar skull tattoo with avocado eyes, onion rings, chilli peppers and a lime wedge, on a leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sugar skull made of avocado, onion and chilli

Neo-trad · Calf · Colour · Photo

A sugar skull is built entirely from food: avocado halves form the eyes, onion rings sit at the top, a sprig of coriander crowns the skull, and red chillies frame the mouth. The skull has bold dark outlines, with soft shading in the avocado, garlic-like nose and teeth. Green, red, yellow and pink ink sit on pale skin against a plain background.

Neo-trad Calf Sugar skull Skull Food

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourselves down, the lot of you, and mind the onions, they're watching you. Forty-one days out from Veracruz and the cask of sugar was gone by the second week, which is how I came to make the skull instead. Cook's rule on the Mariposa is that nothing goes over the side that can be eaten first, and Ezra Pell had died with half a lime in his pocket, so I took that as a sign.

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I began with the onions, three great rings of them red as a lantern, laid across the crown of a skull I carved from a ham bone the bosun had been saving for a wager. The avocados came next, soft as a sick man's cheek. I scooped them clean and set a black peppercorn in each for the eyes. Mrs Okonedo, who kept the mess accounts and never once let me forget it, watched with her arms folded and said the dead wouldn't know the difference. I told her they'd know, and they'd be insulted.

The chillies took the longest. I strung them on fishing line to make a moustache of fire, then stuck a sprig of coriander on top like a feather in a hat, and rubbed lime over the teeth so they'd shine. The men came down one by one and stood round the table without speaking, until the lamp swung and the whole thing seemed to breathe.

When the bell rang at four I cut the skull into eight, as Ezra would have wanted, and every man took a slice. Nobody cried, which he'd have called a waste of good salt. Only the lime stung, and the bosun laughed till he coughed, and the sea went flat and silver. Wherever Ezra had gone, he had a fair meal to take with him.