Realism tattoo of an angel within plate armour and chainmail covering the shoulder and upper arm, shown from two angles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Angel in armour on shoulder and upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A shaded tattoo of layered plate armour with a winged angel in a long robe on the front panel, framed by chainmail that covers the shoulder and upper arm. The metal plates are rendered in smooth grey shading with reflective highlights, while the angel and the filigree scrollwork are picked out in muted gold and tan tones. Two photographs side by side show the piece from the front and the side, with the armour sweeping down the arm.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Armour Angel Filigree Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, the wind up here has teeth and it likes to get into the gaps. See that stone with the crack down it? That was the chapel of Saint Ywain, before the sea took the cliff beneath it and the roof came down in one long sigh. My grandmother swore the bell still rang on the night of the flood, though she also swore she once milked a hare.

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There was a smith in Harrowgate named Tobias Hale who forged for the lord of this place. He made a suit of plate for his son Edwin, and the boy wanted an angel on the shoulder so the armour would go to the field with a witness. Tobias was a stubborn man. He shaped the angel's robe from a single sheet, hammered so fine the folds fell like rain, and when it was done he dusted the scrollwork with brass so it would catch the torchlight on the hall walls.

Edwin wore it to the siege at Corrowby and came home without a mark on that shoulder, though the mail beneath was torn to rags. The angel had taken the blow. Folk said the dent was shaped like a hand. Tobias never mended it. He hung the pauldron above the hearth, dented side to the wall, and every morning he polished those gold wings until his rag came away stained.

Then the castle fell, and Edwin with it, and the pauldron went down the well in the lower court with the other valuables. Some nights, when the wind comes off the sea just so, you can hear the links clinking down there, slow as a man counting. Mind your step on the lip. That isn't the bell you hear. That's the armour, still keeping watch for a lad who never came home.