Realism-style upper arm and shoulder tattoo in black and grey, showing a torn-skin effect revealing a Celtic cross, eagle, engraved armour plates and chainmail.

Armour plate sleeve with Celtic cross and eagle

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A shirtless man's upper arm and shoulder, seen from the side and cropped above the neck. The tattoo imitates armour: a shoulder plate with a Celtic cross and an eagle with spread wings at its centre, engraved scrollwork bands, and chainmail below, all emerging through ripped skin at the edges. The shading is smooth and highly detailed, with strong highlights and deep shadows in grey and brown tones.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Armour Eagle Torn skin Knotwork Scrollwork Sleeve

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

The plate came off the anvil at dawn, still ticking as it cooled, and I held it to the window so the grey light could find the cross I had punched into its crown. Dougal Reid had asked for an eagle with its wings spread wide, and I had given him one, though the bird looked more like it wanted to leave than to guard anything. Eilidh said that was my own temper showing through the steel.

Keep reading

It had taken three weeks. I hammered the scroll bands cold, each curl a little heavier on the left where my hand tired by evening. The mail below I riveted link by link at the kitchen table while the peat fire went out twice, and by the end my fingers were scored with tiny rings of their own. I left the edges ragged on purpose, filed back where the steel met the leather, so it would look as if something had burst out from underneath and kept going.

Dougal came up the track on the morning the boat was waiting at the slip. He turned the plate over in his hands and asked why the edges looked torn, as if it had already been in a fight. I told him that a plate worn only ever whole never learns what the sea is for. He laughed, not unkindly, and buckled it on over his coat, and the cross caught the sun and held it.

I still have the spare ring from the mail. It hangs on a nail beside the door, and when the wind comes off the water it knocks against the wood, a small bright sound like someone counting the ones who came back.