Black and grey pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a woman with sugar skull style face make-up, peonies in her hair and a jewelled necklace, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman with peonies and sugar skull make-up design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a woman's head and shoulders, framed by large peony flowers and leaves in her hair and at the base of the image. Her face has sugar skull style markings, and she wears an ornate headpiece and a jewelled necklace with a central gem. The linework is fine and detailed, with soft graphite shading on the hair, face and fabric, and the image is entirely monochrome.

Neo-trad Botanical Woman Portrait Peony Flower Leaves Sugar skull Headpiece Necklace Jewel Hair

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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

The steward wanted the collar drawn before the funeral, so I sat in the east gallery with my graphite and a stack of cheap paper while the peonies outside the window dropped their heads one by one into the moat. Nobody in Caddow had ever seen the Lady Ilse without her collar, and nobody had ever asked what it was made of. Four rows of silver chain, a pendant the size of a plum, and a stone that caught the light like a drop of water held up to a lamp. My task was to get the drape of it right, the way each bead hangs a fraction heavier than the last.

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On the third morning the queen's dresser came for the drawing. She turned the sheet to the window and frowned at the pendant, then at me. "You've made the stone too honest," she said. "Shade it dull." I had shaded it the way I was taught, with a soft hand and a thumb to lift the highlights, and I did not understand what I had got wrong until she pointed to the bead beneath it. It was carved, not cut. A little skull with peony petals for teeth, no bigger than a fingernail.

I asked her who had carved it. She only smiled and said that every queen of Caddow had worn her grief where the court could see it, and that the stone was glass, and that the bead beneath was the only part anyone had ever meant. Then she took the drawing away, and I went back to the gallery to finish the peonies, shading each petal dark at the heart where the petals fold in on themselves.