Realistic colour tattoo of a grotesque face with red hair and cracked skin across the back of a hand, in a realism style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cracked horror face portrait on the back of a hand

Realism · Hand · Colour · Photo

A realistic colour portrait of a pale, grotesque face with red hair and split, cracked skin covers the back of a hand. Shading gives the wide eyes, nose and open mouth strong depth, with blue and teal tones in the shadows and along the hair. The tattoo fills the back of the hand against a dark background.

Realism Hand Face Portrait Red hair

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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

Mind the fire, you lot, and let the little one sit where I can feel her breathing. This tale belongs to Hester Vane, who carved faces for the mill folk at the edge of Larkmoor wood. Wood, clay, pipe bowls, it made no odds to her. Every face she made had copper wire twisted in for hair, red as a fox in October, and every one of them sold before the paint was dry.

Keep reading

One November a stranger came out of the trees with a sack of broken crockery and a request. He wanted a face for the back of his hand, small enough to hide inside a glove, and he would pay in silver. Hester told him she carved for wood, not for flesh. He left the sack on her step anyway and walked back into the dark without a word of thanks. That night she opened it by the rushlight and found a porcelain face in a hundred pieces, its mouth stretched open as if mid-scream, its eyes still wet with glaze.

She glued it back together over three nights, seams showing, because a clean face would have been a lie. On the fourth morning the seams had moved. Hairline splits ran across the carved cheek where she had left none, and the eyes had turned to follow the door. She set it face down in the flour bin and went to fetch water. When she came back the bin was empty, there was a fresh crack across the back of her own left hand, and something beneath the skin was looking up at her with blue-lit shadows under its brow.

She never carved another face. Her grandson still has her tools, and if you ask him nicely he will show you the back of his hand and tell you it's only colour. Whatever you do, don't ask him whose face is looking out through the cracks.