Black and grey realism sleeve on an arm, with roses, wings, stars and script reading Family and Angel, shown below a black t-shirt.

Black and grey sleeve with roses and wings

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A man wearing a black t-shirt shows an arm covered by a black and grey sleeve tattoo from the upper arm to the wrist. The design includes shaded roses, a winged figure, stars, clouds and script words that appear to read Family and Angel, with a third line that is hard to make out. Soft grey shading gives the piece depth, and the sleeve wraps around the arm as a continuous composition.

Realism Lettering Upper arm Forearm Rose Wing Star Cloud Script Angel Family

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

Snow closed the lane to the Crooked Hart before four o'clock, and by dusk the only light on the moor came from its kitchen window. Nell Ashdown went up to the attic for spare blankets and found the old inn sign face down against a roof beam, its back furred with dust. She turned it over with the lamp held close. A winged figure stood over a bed of pale roses, stars were scattered across a painted cloud, and the lettering ran in two clean lines, FAMILY above and ANGEL below. A third line had flaked to nothing except a loop of an L and the tail of a y.

Keep reading

The carrier stuck in the back room, Joss Penrose, heard her on the ladder and came up with his own lamp. He ran a thumb along the wood and said his mother had kept a lodging house in Halifax called the Angel, with a sign much like this one, until a chimney fire took the roof. Nobody had ever told him what the last line said. He thought it might have been a blessing, or a rule about the stairs. Nell thought of her grandfather, who had painted signs for half the valley and never once explained a word he put on them.

They sat on the blankets and argued over the gap until the lamp guttered. Joss wanted something about bread. Nell wanted the name of a horse. In the end they agreed on nothing, and Nell fetched her grandfather's tin of ochre and a brush worn to a point.

By morning the cloud had torn open and the moor stood blue and enormous under the stars. Nell hung the sign on its iron bracket over the door, and Joss read the new line aloud from the step, though she had painted it in letters so small he had to crouch to see them: LAMP LIT.