Realism style tattoo on an upper arm showing a vintage woman with teased hair and a smiling face divided by a band of coloured geometric triangles.

Vintage portrait with geometric band on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A portrait of a woman with set, teased hair, shown in engraved-style hatching, is split across the middle by a band of multicoloured triangles in teal, orange, red and grey. Below the band, a second face in greyscale smiles broadly. Black and grey shading dominates the faces and hair, while the teal outline and geometric panel add strong colour, and the design sits on the outer upper arm.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Orme wanted the window of the Regal Studio dressed before the Whit holiday, and he wanted it to look as if the future had been delivered by van. Dorothy had been cutting since six. She had a biscuit tin of offcuts from the lino man, triangles of teal and burnt orange he had thrown out, and she was laying them across the glass in the back room, sorting them by how much they wanted to be looked at.

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The face on top belonged to Mrs Hartley Price, who had sat in March and never once stopped being polite. Dorothy had retouched her hair line by line with a nib that tore the card if she pressed too hard. Beneath the band she pasted a second face, a man from a toothpaste advert, mouth open in a laugh that had nothing to do with the woman above it. She studied the arrangement for a long time, then nudged the grey fog a quarter inch to the left so the two halves would argue.

Orme came in at four, put on his spectacles and said it was indecent. Then he asked whether the triangles could be bigger, because people on the bus should be able to read it from the pavement. Half the town, he said, keeps one face for church and the other for the dance hall. He did not say which half he belonged to.

On Saturday Mrs Hartley Price came in to collect her proofs and stood in front of the window for a full minute with her gloves in one hand. She did not ask for the bill. She asked whether the picture was for sale, and when Dorothy said it was not, she asked whether a smaller one could be made for her husband's desk. Dorothy said yes. She still had the tin of offcuts, and plenty of teal left.

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