Black and grey realism tattoo of comedy and tragedy theatre masks with swirling ribbon linework, placed between the shoulder blades on a woman's back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Comedy and tragedy masks on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two theatre masks, one smiling and one grimacing, overlapping at the centre with small swirling ribbon lines above and below. The faces use soft grey shading and fine outlines, giving the masks some depth and detail. The image is taken from behind, with the subject's auburn hair falling over her shoulders and the tattoo sitting centrally on her upper back.

Realism Back Swirl Ribbon

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 prompter's booth on Halden Ring has been dark for eleven years, but you still climb up to it before every matinee that nobody books. From there the two masks hang above the proscenium where the work lights can reach them: one with its mouth lifted at the corners, one with its mouth dragged down, both cast in the same grey resin so that under the lamps they look like a single face still making up its mind.

Keep reading

Ferro, the old dresser, taught you to shade them by hand, a thumb of graphite worked into each cheek so the faces hold their dusk. The ribbons looping above and below were cut from the rigging lines that used to lower the scenery, and he insisted they stay knotted to the masks even after the flies seized up. Nobody remembers who first tied them that way. Ferro said it was so the masks could never be taken down without someone noticing.

Tonight there are four people in the stalls: two dock children, a tug captain with his cap on his knee, and a woman from the medical bay who came because she was owed a ticket. You have one play left in the repertory, a two-hander called The Tenants, and no other actor to speak to. So you change masks in the wings between every line, comedy then tragedy, and by the second act your own voice sounds like a stranger's.

At the final bow the tug captain is the only one still clapping, and he is clapping for the frowning face. You do not correct him. You stand beneath the hanging pair with the cold mask in your hands and understand that the stage was never the hard part. The hard part was staying in the seats long enough to be seen by someone who hadn't left.