Fine line ink drawing on paper of a woman with a large flower in her hair, a tear on her cheek, and a ruffled collar with layered necklaces and a key.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman with flower and key necklace design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing on paper shows a woman in profile-leaning portrait with her hair swept into an updo and a large rose-like flower tucked behind it. She wears a ruffled high collar with layered chains, beads and a key pendant, and a small keyhole ornament sits on her forehead. The linework is even and fine, with hatched shading on the leaves and hair, and the design is entirely monochrome.

Fine line Woman Portrait Flower Rose Leaves Tear Necklace Key Keyhole Collar Hair Chain Bead

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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

No, sit down, all of you, I haven't reached the fire escape yet. You want the version where Mrs Pollard was a witch, and I'll give you that later, but the proper tale belongs to Maureen Hale, who wore a real rose in her hair every day of the Lower Sixth and dared anyone to comment on it.

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Maureen had the key to the trophy cabinet, a small silver thing on a chain she wore under her ruffled collar, layered over three strands of glass beads her nan had sent from Lisbon. Mrs Pollard kept the Harvest Cup in there, and the cup had never once been polished by anyone who wasn't Maureen. So when the choir competition loomed and the cup went missing from its shelf the Monday before, everyone looked at Maureen, and Maureen looked at the floor.

Here's the bit Gary's never got right. On the Thursday, I found her crying by the lost property cupboard, one tear running down past her mouth, and she wouldn't say a word about the cup. Instead she pressed the key into my palm and said, 'Open the sixth drawer, Terry, and don't tell Pollard it was me.' Inside the sixth drawer, wrapped in a school tie, sat the Harvest Cup, and tucked under its base was a folded note in her neat hand, asking the school to forgive whoever had taken the choir's sheet music, because she had needed a copy to learn her part at home, and her mother had burned the last one in the grate.

Forty years on I still have that key. It opens nothing now, but I carry it, same as Maureen carried her rose, because some things are worth wearing where people can see them. Pass the crisps down, Gary, and mind your good shirt. Yes, that one. The ruffles are a disgrace.