Colour biomechanical skull with a coiled spine tattoo on a lower leg, set against red and grey shading in a realistic style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Biomechanical skull and spine on a calf

Realism · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A grey metallic skull with hollow eye sockets sits at the centre of the design, with a coiled spine and mechanical plates running down beneath it. The skull and coil are shaded with smooth highlights and soft shadows, and the surrounding skin appears to peel back to reveal the machinery. Bold red fills the background behind the skull, and the tattoo follows the curve of the calf from top to bottom.

Realism Calf Skull Spine Coil Mechanical Biomechanical Torn skin

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 Ned,

Keep reading

The skull came out of its crate on Tuesday and the hall went quiet the way a chapel does when the organist drops a hymn book. Mr Ferriby had paid for a grey iron head with hollow sockets, and I had bolted it to a length of bedspring coil I'd wound myself in the back of the works, the same gauge we use for the Big Wheel's brake drums. He wanted it hung behind the red velvet of the stage so that when the lamps came up it would seem to be pushing its way out through the drapes.

Half the band walked out on it. Mavis at the coat check crossed herself, which I thought was a bit much for a jaw on a hinge. But the trick worked. When the saxophones hit the first bar I threw the switch, the coil began to climb and drop, the plates along the ribs clicked open like shutters, and the whole floor of dancers turned to watch the thing breathe.

Here is the part I can't put in a telegram. After the last waltz, when the boards were sawdust and cigarette ends, I found a girl of about nine sitting on the stage steps with her chin in her hands, watching the coil settle. She said it looked like it was trying to get out of its own skin. I told her it was only springs. She said that was what she meant.

I've left the switch on so it keeps ticking over in the empty hall. Come up at Christmas and see it before Mr Ferriby sells the place to the bingo men.

Your brother, Tom