Black and grey Buddha face tattoo covering a person's back, with clouds, two praying monks and cloud work extending onto the upper arms.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Buddha face and monks across a back

Japanese · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large Buddha face fills the centre of the back, with closed eyes, a forehead dot and a tiered headdress framed by stylised clouds. Two smaller praying figures sit at the base of the design, and cloud and ornamental patterns continue over the shoulders and upper arms. The work uses smooth grey shading and fine contrast on a bare back, with no colour ink.

Japanese Realism Back Upper arm Buddha Cloud Headdress Halo

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 head came out of the skip behind the old launderette on Ancoats Street at quarter past two, face down in a sack of plaster dust. I only saw it because the rain had washed the grey off its brow, and the forehead dot caught my lamp like a bead of water. I was on the bike, dropping a late order of noodles above the launderette, and I should have kept pedalling. Instead I stood with the wheel ticking and the rain running off my hood until the whole face lifted clear of the rubble.

Keep reading

Nobody wanted it. The demolition foreman said the council had already sold the lot to a yard in Salford, and the yard would only take stone with a receipt. So I lashed a milk crate to the rack and rode it home through empty streets, with the two small kneeling figures from the same skip wrapped in my spare jumper. The monks had been holding a book between their palms, and one still had a chip off its chin.

Mrs Okafor downstairs, who has kept a shrine to her mother on the landing for thirty years, said a face like that is meant to be looked at from below. So I set it on the windowsill facing the depot, where the night buses idle with their engines running. She said the closed eyes were not sleep but patience. I did not believe her, and for a week I kept turning the head to face the wall.

On the Sunday the depot lights failed in a power cut and the street sank into a plain, deep dark. I sat by the sill with a torch, and the stone seemed to lean into the glow from the bus shelter, as if listening for the engines to start again. I left it facing the street after that. Some nights I rest my hand on its cold brow on the way out, and the rain carries on past the glass.