Traditional style tattoo of a woman's face framed by oak leaves, an acorn and pinecones on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman's face with oak and acorns on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A woman's face with heavy dark hair, downcast eyes and dark lips is the central subject, with an acorn and oak leaves above her head. Below, a branch of leaves ends in two red and green pinecones. The face is shaded in soft greys with bold black outlines, while the leaves, acorn and cones use green, orange and red accents against a plain skin background.

Traditional Botanical Forearm Woman Face Acorn Branch Hair

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

Sit on that coil of rope where I can see your face, because this is a story for watching faces. The oak that went into the keel of the Mercy Dunn was felled on the Hollin ridge the spring the church bell cracked, and the woman who came up the track to count its rings was called Idony Vane. She had hair down to her waist, dark as a ploughed field after rain, and she never once looked at the axe men. She looked at the acorns.

Keep reading

The foreman asked her what she wanted for the timber. She said nothing for the wood, only that when the ship went out, she wanted one acorn from the crown of that tree pressed into the bilge where the sea could reach it. Foolish, the men said. Oak does not grow in salt. But they laid it there anyway, a green leaf pinned to the planking by a shipwright's nail, and she walked back down the hill with her hands folded like a nun at a graveside.

The Mercy Dunn made nine crossings before the storm off the Horn took her masts and half her crew. Every man who slept below swore a woman stood at the foot of the ladder some nights, combing oak leaves out of her hair. The ship came home anyway, on a glassy morning, timbers swollen tight and a branch of green pushing up through the cargo hatch as if it had been waiting for the tide. Nobody could say how it got there.

So when you hear the wind go round the headland tonight, do not call it bad luck. Idony is only checking on her acorns. Now pass me that mug, and mind the pinecones on your way down the ladder. They bite.