Two views of a black and grey realism full sleeve on an upper arm and forearm, showing a sculpted classical angel with wings, flowing drapery and foliage.

Black and grey angel statue sleeve

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The sleeve shows a sculpted classical angel with a curled head of hair, half-hidden wings and a wide drape of cloth, set against dense leaves and shadowy foliage. The shading moves smoothly from deep black to soft greys, giving the figures a stone-like, three-dimensional finish. Two photographs of the same arm, one from the front and one from the shoulder, show the piece wrapping from the upper arm down towards the elbow.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Forearm Angel Wing Drapery Foliage

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 angel on Carrow Pass had lost her nose to frost before anyone in the valley could remember, but she still held her stone cloth out over the road as if offering it to whoever came over the top. The shepherds said a mason carved her for a woman from the lowlands who never came back up the hill, so he gave his grief to the rock and left her wings half buried in it, so she could never quite fly away.

Keep reading

Snow came early that year, the kind that fills a gully in an afternoon. Ilse Varley went up the far side with the flock because her brother Tomas had gone ahead with the dogs and not come back. The carved leaves around the statue were white at their edges, and the folds of the drapery were packed with drift, deep as a sleeper's blanket. She called until her throat hurt. Only the wind answered, pushing through the sculpted feathers with a sound like someone breathing through their teeth.

She found him kneeling under the angel's raised arm, his hands pressed to a fold of stone cloth as though it were a wall he meant to keep. When she reached for him the stone was warm under her palm, warm as a loaf fresh from the oven, and the snow slid off the robe in a single sheet. Tomas lifted his head. Between them they got the dogs and the ewes down into the lee of the rock, and the storm passed over them the way water goes over a weir.

In spring a carter found a new feather cut clean at the tip of one wing, and the shepherds still leave a heel of bread on the plinth before they cross. Ilse ties a small brass bell to the drapery each winter. It has a cracked tongue, and it still rings when the wind comes off the top, which the valley takes as thanks.