Realism-style black and grey tattoo of a large skull and eye across a man's chest and stomach, with a snake and flowers on the shoulder and arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey skull and eye torso tattoo

Realism · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A man's bare torso and arm are covered in tattoos, dominated by a large realistic skull with a detailed eye set within its forehead area. A snake wraps over the shoulder and neck, with a smaller skull at the top of the frame and further ornamental work running down the upper arm. Fine shading gives the skin a three-dimensional look, and small patches of red and green colour appear around the shoulder and arm against the mostly grey tones.

Realism Chest Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Skull Eye Snake Flower Sleeve Torso

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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 last tram has rattled past the cathedral railings, and the pawnshop on Sallow Street is dark except for the lamp you leave burning in the back. Nobody comes in after eleven. Nobody except Mr Eamon Gage, who has brought the glass eye back for the third time this month.

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It is a good eye, brown and wet, set in a skull-shaped case of tarnished brass that he swears was his grandfather's. He does not want money for it. He wants you to look at it the way he says it looks at him, from the shelf above the till, every hour the clock strikes. You tell him the shop does not take sentiment. He laughs, a dry sound like paper tearing, and leaves the eye on the counter with a red paper flower tucked under its rim.

You do not sleep that night. You sit with the lamp and the ledger, and at the stroke of two you find yourself turning the skull so its empty brow faces the door. The eye has rolled a little toward the window. Outside, the gas lamps hum along Sallow Street, and a cold green light slides across the glass where the flower lies, the colour of a bottle held up to the moon.

At dawn you carry the eye to the back room and lock it in the drawer marked unredeemed. When you come back to the front, the shutter is already up and the street is grey and ordinary, and the red flower sits on the mat by the door, fresh as if it had only just been picked. You do not touch it. You leave it there for the milkman, and you pretend you did not see the eye's gaze follow you out.