Neo-traditional colour tattoo of an animal skull with a yellow crescent moon, a red rose and green leaves on a forearm, with a black snake coiled below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Animal skull, rose and snake on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A forearm tattoo showing a grey animal skull with a yellow crescent moon on its brow, bloodied teeth and a red rose with green leaves rising above it. A black snake or vine coils around the lower part of the skull and leaves. The linework is bold and the shading is smooth, with bright, saturated colour against a plain black background.

Neo-trad Botanical Forearm Skull Animal skull Rose Crescent moon Snake Leaves Blood

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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 rain has been at the Saturday market since dawn, and by four the awnings sag like wet sheets over the stalls on Pennon Street. You have been selling the last of the bric-a-brac for an hour without a single sale, and the man in the next pitch, who sells secondhand paperbacks, keeps glancing at the crate under your table where the fox skull sits wrapped in a tea towel.

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You bought it from a widow in Carrick, along with a silver crescent brooch she swore had been her mother's and a length of old bootlace she had knotted round the jaw. The skull is older than either of you. Its teeth have gone the colour of weak tea, and someone once painted a little moon on the brow so the thing would look lucky. You do not believe in luck, but you have sold enough to know what people believe.

A woman comes under the awning at half past four, shaking water from a green umbrella. She does not look at the brooch. She lifts the tea towel and, for a long moment, only looks, the way you would look at a dog that might bite. She says her grandfather kept foxes on the hill above the mill before the war. She asks what you want for it. You tell her the truth, which is that you want it gone before the rain turns to sleet.

She pays in coins counted out onto her palm. Before she leaves she winds the bootlace round the skull's jaw again, tighter, the way a person ties a shoe they mean to walk far in. Behind you the paperback man is already lowering his shutter, and the rain starts again, softer now, on the empty crate.