Colour traditional tattoo of a woman's face in a striped headscarf with black wings and red roses, on the back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged woman with roses in traditional style

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

A woman's face in a striped headscarf with pearl trim is framed by black and grey wings tipped with green and yellow. Red roses with green leaves sit on either side, with drop earrings and a pearl necklace below the face. Bold black outlines and flat solid fills in red, yellow, green and purple give the design a classic traditional look.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ines,

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The wind has turned again over Lantern Reach and the old gasbag Mabel Quill is grounded for the third time this year, so I have spent a week up a ladder with a tin of paint and nothing better to do with my hands. The woman on her prow has been flaking since before Dad was born. The yard boss wanted her scraped. I wanted to see what she looked like before the weather got at her.

I found the old pattern book in the rivet locker, wrapped in oilcloth and smelling of tar. Someone's pencil notes ran down the margins: wings black and grey, the tips washed green, then yellow. A striped scarf in red and brown with pearls sewn along its edge like frost. Roses either side, red as a ship's lamp, with leaves dark enough to hide a cat in. Bold black lines and no shading, because shading never survives a storm. I followed every instruction, and when the pearls kept sinking into the paint I added a thread of gold to each one.

Last night I went up at dusk to check the varnish. The dock lamps came on below and the pearls caught them, so for a moment the figurehead wore a necklace of light that nobody had put there. Old Tomas from the rigging shop stood under her with his pipe and said she looked like she was about to fly off and leave us. I said that was the idea. He said the idea had been lost for a long time, and that I was the first to bother finding it again.

Come home at the thaw. I'll show you the book and the roses. Your brother says hello, and he is lying about having fixed the gallery hatch.

Love, Maud

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