Realistic colour tattoo of a bladed metal glove with long curved fingers and dripping blood, on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bladed glove tattoo on upper back

Realism · Back · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a bladed metal glove with long, curved fingers and a dark, torn-looking backdrop that extends across the skin. The metal is shaded with smooth gradients of grey, brown and gold, with red blood dripping from the blade tips. The photograph is taken from behind, with the design filling the upper back and the rest of the frame showing skin.

Realism Back Glove Blade Claw Metal Blood

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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

You find the glove on the nail above the hay bales, where your uncle Dennis left it the winter he stopped going to the foundry. Someone has polished the brass straps bright for the wedding, and the four long blades curve like a kestrel's talons. Through the barn slats the marquee is already humming with caterers, and somebody has strung fairy lights along the gate.

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Wendy wanted it on the cake table, a joke for Dennis's side of the family. You said no. Now you are the one holding it, the leather lining cool and smelling of machine oil and wet rope. Three of the fingertips are dark, as though dipped in something, and you tell yourself it is only the cordial the caterers spilled on Thursday, that rust would look different, that nobody puts red on a glove for a wedding.

You work your hand in. It takes the shape of you at once, as if it had been waiting, and the blades ease open with a sound like a tin lid being bent back. Outside the band starts the first song, the one Wendy chose, and the guests turn towards the barn door the way people do when a bride is about to appear.

You have a speech folded in your jacket pocket. You leave it there. The cake knife sits on the trestle, silver and blunt, and you walk past it with the glove on your right hand and step into the light. The photographer, who has never once asked what Dennis did for a living, lifts his camera and says, lovely, hold that.