Black ink drawing of a woman's face framed by a circle, with flowing hair, winged leaves, jellyfish-like tendrils and stippled shading, shown as a tattoo design without a body placement.

Woman with jellyfish and winged hair in a circle

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed black ink drawing of a woman's face in three-quarter view, with long flowing hair that spills around a circular frame. Translucent winged shapes sit in her hair, and jellyfish-like tendrils and frilled forms curl across her cheek and down the composition. The linework is fine and dense, with stippled dotwork shading and a hatched texture in the hair, and the design is entirely black and grey.

Dotwork Fine line Woman Face Jellyfish Hair Wing Tendril Stipple

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

Dear Marguerite, the tide tables have gone to pieces since you left, so I am writing instead of walking the harbour wall. The boats are all tied up in Pellow Cove now, and the fishermen sit on the slipway mending nets and pretending not to watch the water. Last Tuesday old Hennessy swore he saw a light moving under the pier at two in the morning, a pale lantern drifting like a dropped veil, and when he rowed out there was nothing but a ring of jellies turning slowly around the pilings, bells opening and closing as if breathing for someone.

Keep reading

You will laugh, but I went out myself on Thursday. I took the small dinghy and the lamp with the cracked chimney, and I sat very still while the tide came in beneath me. The jellies came up with their frilled edges lifting, and their trailing threads went through the water like hair combed loose. One of them touched my wrist, cold as a coin, and for a moment I heard the bells of the Chapel of St Ysolde ringing from under the sea, which is impossible, because that chapel went down in the great storm before either of us was born.

I am sending you the small glass bead I found tangled in the threads. It is the colour of a wing held up to the moonlight. Keep it on your windowsill where the gulls cannot reach it, and when the wind turns east, look at it and tell me whether the tide has begun to sing again. I will be on the wall at the turn, lamp lit, waiting for your answer.

Yours through every tide, Eliza