Two black sugar skull tattoos with floral detailing, one on each thigh, shown in a fine line style.

Sugar skull tattoos on both thighs

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

Two sugar skull designs sit side by side on the upper thighs, one on each leg, and each is filled with ornamental floral patterns, petals and scrollwork. The linework is solid black with no shading, so the flowers and swirls read as negative and positive shapes. The photo shows only the legs and lace-trimmed underwear, with a plain bed in the background.

Botanical Thigh Sugar skull Skull Flower Floral Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fair pulled into Kettering on a Tuesday, and by Thursday Nell had used the last of the black ink on the skull cloths. Her uncle Tomas had taught her that anyone could draw a skull, but the flowers were the honest part of the work. A petal had to be cut clean or it looked like a mistake, and a scroll had to turn before it ran out of nerve. So she mixed soot with a drop of linseed, lay the canvas across two trestles behind the coconut shy, and worked until the generator coughed and the lights along the Waltzer went dark one bulb at a time.

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The ghost train girl came round at dusk, chewing a toffee apple and asking why the skulls had no shading. Nell told her shadows were for people with time to be frightened, and that a skull filled with flowers was just a skull that had been given something to do. The girl laughed and bought two for her gran, who she said would hang them above the telly. Nell didn't tell her that Tomas had sold the first one in a Leicester churchyard for the price of a pint, or that the lilies on it had been his mother's favourite, cut from the vicarage hedge.

Tomas left on the Sunday with the big top in pieces on the lorry. Nell stayed to finish the last skull on the caravan step, a little one with a marigold wound through its jaw and a single curl at each temple. The wind came up off the car park and lifted the canvas edge, rattling the pegs. She weighted the corners with two jam jars and sat with her boots in the grass until the ink was dry enough to touch, watching the petals stay put.