Pair of white gloves painted with traditional style tattoo designs, including a swallow, a skull, an anchor, a horseshoe and a cross.

Traditional tattoo designs painted on white gloves

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A pair of cream leather gloves is painted with a set of traditional style tattoo designs. Motifs include a swallow with a banner, a skull in a horseshoe, a cross and anchor, stars, shields and small flowers, with the words GIRL LOVE across the fingers. The designs use bold black outlines with flat red, blue, green and yellow fills, and are scattered across the back of each glove.

Traditional Glove Swallow Skull Horseshoe Anchor Cross Star Flower Banner Shield Lettering

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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

The swallow went on last, because Marnie said a swallow was the only thing that always knew its way home. Ray pinned the left glove flat on the back counter of the Sundown Stop and worked the black outline in with a sable brush he had bought in Needles for a dollar. The enamel came from a tin he had carried since his shop on Fremont Street closed. Outside, the heat stood on the highway like a man waiting to be asked a question, and the pump bell rang twice with nobody coming in.

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He had not tattooed skin in eleven years, not since the tremor settled into his right hand and made the needle sing wrong. Flash was different. Flash forgave a wobble if you filled it bold enough. So he did the skull in the horseshoe first, grinning under a red rose, with GOOD LUCK curling across a banner the colour of old Coca-Cola. Then the anchor and cross on the cuff, and five small stars flicked across the cream leather. Marnie wanted GIRL LOVE across the fingers in letters that would not wash off, so he used a fine liner and did each knuckle slowly, counting under his breath.

The bus to Flagstaff left at six. She would wear them on the vinyl seat with the window down, and nobody on that road would ever know who had held the brush. He wrapped the pair in tissue, then unwrapped the right one again to add a shield on the palm side, because a pair should not be unequal.

At dawn the bus pulled out past the pumps. Ray stood in the lot with a cold coffee and watched a glove lift from an open window, the swallow catching the first light, its ink still wet.