Black and grey realism tattoo of a woman with sugar skull face paint and flowing hair, with a rose below, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sugar skull woman with rose on an arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with sugar skull face paint and long, flowing hair is the central subject, with ornate patterns over her eyes, nose and mouth. A large rose sits at the bottom of the piece, and wisps of hair curl down the arm. The tattoo uses smooth, detailed shading in black and grey on a dark background.

Realism Upper arm Woman Sugar skull Rose Long hair Portrait

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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

Mrs Tallis kept the boarding house at the top of Gull Steps, and she never let a room to anyone who came up the hill after dark. So when the woman with the painted face knocked on the last night of October, her daughter Ada said nothing and only watched from the stair.

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The woman had a face as white as salt, with black lace drawn over the eyes and a red rose set on one cheek like a coin. Her hair ran down past her waist and kept moving after the wind had stopped. She paid for the attic room in old silver, which was not the money of anywhere in the county, and she asked for a basin of water and a comb.

Ada carried up the basin. In the morning the water was black and the comb was full of hair that was not the stranger's. Her mother said the sea does that to people who ask it for too much. The woman came down to breakfast with a rose freshly open on her wrist, ate one boiled egg very slowly, and said the fishermen beyond the breakwater had not been paid in a long time.

That night the harbour bell rang once for every man lost since spring, and Ada counted nine strokes. By morning the attic room was empty except for a wet comb on the sill and nine small shells in a row, each one warm as a hand. Her mother put them in a jar by the door and left the window open all winter, so the woman could come and go as she pleased.