Black and grey full sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and forearm, showing skulls, horned creatures, a dagger and wolf-like heads among smoky clouds.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey full sleeve with skulls and beasts

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A full sleeve shown from several angles, with skulls, a horned creature, a dagger, a wolf-like animal head and a figure holding a blade. The work uses fine, dense linework and detailed shading in black and grey, with smoky clouds filling the gaps between the motifs. The composition wraps around the arm from shoulder to wrist against a dark background.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Skull Dagger Sword Wolf Cloud Smoke 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

Sit closer, the lamp is nearly spent and the wind up here has ears. Latch the shutter. You want the true account of the Stone Gate, or the one the customs men tell over their tea? Good. Then I'll give you the true one.

Keep reading

Forty winters back, a carter named Tomas Verr came up the north road with a mule, a sack of salt and a debt he could not pay. At the summit the fog rolled in thick as wool, and a grey wolf stood in the road with its eyes level with his own. It did not snarl. It only looked at the mule, then at the cairn of skulls the old smugglers had built beside the track, and walked on ahead of him into the smoke.

Where the wolf led, the horned thing waited. It stood taller than the gatepost, its skull bleached and crowned with spirals, its breath pouring out in grey clouds. It asked for one thing only, a name Tomas had never spoken aloud. He had nothing else to give, so he gave the name of the man who had sold him the debt. Then he drew the dagger the widow in the valley had pressed on him for luck, cut the rope binding the salt to the mule, and let the sacks fall into the fog.

Morning came. The salt was gone, the debt was gone, and the wolf sat on the gatepost watching the road. Tomas never climbed that pass again. When the customs men ask why the gate is called Stone, I tell them it is because nothing up here stays carved in the wrong place for long. Hold the lamp steady, child, and mind the smoke.