Black and grey realism tattoo of a classical bearded head, resembling a marble sculpture, on the forearm, shown from two angles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Classical bearded head on forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a bearded classical head in profile-leaning view, with a wavy, flowing beard and curled hair rendered to look like carved stone. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft gradients across the brow, cheek and hair. The photo shows the forearm from two angles against a wooden floor, with the design filling most of the forearm.

Realism Forearm Statue Beard Curly hair Portrait

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

Shift over and mind the fire, because this one is about a head that would not stay put. Old Tamsin Rook kept the quarry at the far edge of Hollin Wood, and when lightning split the grey ledge one spring, she found a block the size of a cider barrel lying in the bracken, and inside it, a face. She knew at once it was an old god with a sour mouth and a beard that rolled like surf, so she set to work with her chisels and gave it every curl the stone would allow.

Keep reading

The village wanted it at the crossroads to keep the wood honest. Seven men hauled it up on a cart and set it on a plinth of field stones, and that first night the head turned a finger's width toward the trees. Tamsin swore she had set it square. The miller's boy laughed and said the wind had done it, so he dared the god to watch him sleep, and he slept under its stare with his coat pulled over his ears. In the morning his hair was wet with dew that had come from nowhere, and the god's beard had a new crack running down from the brow like a frown.

After that nobody would go near the crossroads after dark. The elders argued for a week, then dug a pit to bury the thing, but the spade rang on roots as thick as a man's arm, and when they lifted the head it was furred with green, sparrows nesting in the curls of its hair. They gave up and left it where it lay, and the road bent round it ever since.

If you walk Hollin road in the morning you will find him still, half sunk in the ferns, looking down on the village with the patience of stone that has decided it is not finished being a god. Mind the path. He does not like to be stepped over.