Black and grey portrait tattoo of a woman with dark hair on the lower leg, seen through black tights.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman portrait tattoo on the lower leg

Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A small portrait of a woman's head is tattooed on the lower leg, partly visible through black sheer tights. The image shows a woman in a green cable knit cardigan and a white t-shirt with a fox print, photographed outdoors. The tattoo uses black and grey tones with soft shading, and the rest of the image is mostly muted greens and whites.

Calf Woman Portrait Head

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Harry Vance cut the stencil by paraffin lamp, because the electric had gone off again in Bermondsey and nobody on the street had bothered to ring the company. The card was an old tobacco tin lid. He had cut the woman's face into it a dozen times now: the same brow, the same sharp chin, a brimmed cap tilted so its shadow fell across one eye. Customers wanted her on shopfronts. Publicans wanted her on barrels. Nobody asked who she was.

Keep reading

On Tuesday a boy came in soaked to the skin, asking for her on his shin. He had the money folded inside his sock. Harry said he did signs, not skin, and the boy said the stencil was all he needed, the man on Shad Thames would do the rest. Harry handed over the card anyway, because the boy's mother had once paid him in cigarettes when money was tight and he had never quite forgiven himself for taking them.

On Friday, walking home along the canal, Harry passed the new sign above the bookmaker's on Tower Street. It was his woman, painted in black and grey, the shading done so carefully that the cap's shadow fell exactly where he had cut it. Someone had signed the corner with a small brass tack. He stood a long time under the gas lamp, then took the tin lid from his coat and turned it over. On the back, in a hand he did not know, someone had cut a second face, younger, and smiling.