Black and grey traditional tattoo on a torso featuring a woman's portrait, a moustachioed man in a bow tie, arrows and chain borders around the navel.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional portraits and arrows on a torso

Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A torso covered in a traditional style tattoo with a woman's profile on the left and a moustachioed man in a bow tie on the right. A central oval frame with a floral ornament surrounds the navel, with arrows above and chain borders and roses below. The work uses bold black outlines and solid black and grey shading on pale skin, with the composition sitting symmetrically across the midriff.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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Mr Lovell has finally paid for the gallery frame, though he paid in shillings he had clearly been saving for a fortnight, and he asks me to tell you the archery tent is yours to run next summer if you can keep your arrows out of the Punch and Judy booth. I told him you had a steadier hand than any man on the front, which is nearly true.

The oval cameo he commissioned hangs now above the dodgem stall, where the sun catches the chain border every afternoon. It has his mother in it, in the profile he insisted on, with the pearl drops she pawned in 1919. The roses either side came from the Lovells' back garden in Cleethorpes, pressed and painted over. Three arrows sit on top, all hitting the same mark, which Mr Lovell calls a promise and I call showing off.

Mrs Dale from the bakery came out in her good hat to see it and said the gentleman on the right had a moustache like the vicar's, which set the whole queue laughing. Fred only smiled in that way he has, the one that means he has already spent the money twice. He gave me a second frame for you, the one with no picture in it yet. He says you will know who goes in it.

Write soon, and bring the good thread.

Love, Ada

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