Coloured flash design on paper showing a half woman, half skull face framed by roses, flowers and feathers, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman and skull design with roses

Neo-trad · Mixed · Flash

The drawing shows a woman's face merged with a skull on one side, with a large dark eye and pale blue and pink shading. Roses, blossoms, leaves and a dark feather or wing sit around the head, with small ornamental eyes at the lower left. Soft pastel washes of blue, pink and green sit over fine black linework and grey shading, on a plain sheet with a dark rose at the upper right.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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I have had the portrait of Mrs Lydgate on the easel since Tuesday and I still cannot decide which half of her I am meant to mend. The left side is a proper young woman, lashes dark, mouth about to say something unkind. The right side is bone, cool and grey as a drain cover, and someone, some hand long gone, has painted roses spilling out of the crown as if the skull were a window box. The varnish on the roses is flawless. The varnish on the bone is cracked like ice.

Mr Pargeter at the auction house swears it came out of a house clearance in Hebden Bridge with a pair of blue-eyed owls pinned to the back board, and that the feather tucked behind the frame was there before the paint. I told him feathers do not stay put for a hundred years. He said neither do husbands, and went off whistling.

Last night I stayed late with the lamp turned low, meaning to take a swab from the lower edge. When I looked up, the bone half had gone a shade warmer, the way a face does when someone has just spoken its name. I do not believe in that sort of thing. I put the feather in my coat pocket anyway, and I am writing to you with the pocket buttoned, because you always said I would be the one to hear the old ones talking.

Come up on Saturday. Bring the good brushes, and do not look at the right side until I have had my tea.

Your loving sister, Ada

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