Two bare legs resting on white sheets, covered in colourful traditional tattoos of roses, a dagger and a lantern on the calves and thighs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional tattoos on legs against white bedding

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

Two legs are raised and crossed at the ankles on white bedding, photographed from above. Bold black outlines and solid fills of red, green, blue and pink make up traditional-style motifs including roses, a dagger and a lantern across the calves and thighs. The composition is loose and candid, with the tattoos filling most of the frame against the soft white fabric.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the big top came down on Tuesday in Wigan, and the brass lantern from the ring entrance is in my suitcase because nobody else wanted it and Mr Oakes still owes me four weeks' wages. I have packed it between two shirts so it won't rattle. The paraffin went out of it years ago, but the metal still takes a shine if you rub it with your sleeve.

Keep reading

You'll laugh, but I have been drawing the old flash again. It's the trade the Ringmaster's brother taught me on oranges before he went off to Blackpool for good. Roses, a dagger with a curled ribbon, a lantern with a little glass door. Red for the blooms, green for the leaves, and a blue for the sky that nobody in the ring ever looked up at. I sketched them on the back of the programme sheets while the tent emptied out, and the girl who feeds the elephants asked if I'd do the same three things in a matching pair, so they'd look right together when she walks under the lights.

She says the lantern is for finding the way home, which is a sentimental thing to say about a circus that has lost its route. I told her a lantern is for the road and the dagger is for the lion tamer and the roses are just roses. She laughed and said it was the most honest thing anyone had told her all season, then asked me to fetch the ink before the afternoon train.

Write when you've settled. I'll send you the lantern's address once I know where I'm sleeping.

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