Traditional style tattoo of a woman's face framed by a leafy headdress on the forearm, shaded in black and grey with touches of red.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional woman portrait with leaf headdress

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A stylised woman's face in profile-leaning three-quarter view, with dark hair swept back beneath a headdress of laurel-like leaves and feathers, and a small hoop earring. The bold black outlines and solid black hair contrast with grey shading across the leaves and skin, with red accents on the cheek and eyelid. The design fills the forearm, with the figure's shoulders tapering off toward the wrist.

Traditional Forearm Woman Face Laurel Leaves Feather Headdress Hair Earring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad had the Morwenna's figurehead laid across two trestles when I came in out of the rain, and he was swearing at the laurel. Elm splits against the grain, he said, and the leaves kept breaking off in his hand as if the wood didn't want them. I took the rag from his belt and wiped the sawdust from her cheeks. The face was finished already, long and sorrowful, her hair swept back under a crown of carved feathers that ran down the nape of her neck like the spine of a gull.

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Nobody else in Polkerris would have trusted me with the eyes, but Dad said a boat needs to see where it's going, and my hand had steadied that summer. I mixed soot into the grey for the feathers and laid the highlights along her jaw. The red went on last, two soft smudges high on the cheeks, the same lead we used on the hull seams. A brass hoop hung from one ear, bought off a pawnbroker in Newlyn for the price of a bad week's catch. When I stepped back she looked less like timber and more like someone waiting on the quay for a fishing boat to come home.

Uncle Hal came down at dusk and said she was too handsome for a boat that would only be lost in the Channel. He wanted her turned to face the harbour wall so the men wouldn't have to look at her. Dad said nothing. I said nothing either, and I kept my brush dry.

The Morwenna went out at first light with her figurehead bolted to the bow, facing east to open water. I watched from the harbour steps as she rose and fell through the swell, her carved feathers catching the sun, and the red on her cheeks still bright where the spray couldn't reach.