Black and grey realism tattoo of an eye, two skulls and tribal linework across the upper arm and shoulder.

Eye and skulls on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder, centred on a realistic eye within a tribal-style black band. A shaded skull sits below the eye, with a second skull with swirling smoke-like detail lower on the arm. Soft grey shading gives the skulls depth against the skin tone, and the bold black tribal shapes frame the composition.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Eye Skull Tribal Swirl Smoke

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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

Tuesday, 14th November. Box at Harrowgate Junction, nine till six, and the 22:40 late again. I wrote the times in the book the way Mr Pardoe taught me, square and neat, though my hand wouldn't quite settle on the lever for the Up road. The lamp in the window has one good eye left, its glass cracked straight across like a bad cataract, and I keep meaning to ask the depot for a new pane.

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Old Hollis had the box before me. He used to say the cutting behind the platform was a graveyard, that the chalk bank was full of grey flint nodules the navvies called skulls, and that the smoke from the goods yard curled over them like something breathing. He said if you kept a lamp lit long enough, the line would show you who was owed a train. I laughed at him over his tea. I don't laugh now.

At twenty to eleven a woman stood at the foot of the platform with a carpetbag and a ticket she kept turning in her gloved fingers. She didn't board. She looked up at my window and lifted one hand, slow, the way you'd greet a neighbour across the street. Then the bell rang for the 22:40, the signal dropped clear, and the platform was empty before the wheels had stopped turning.

This morning I found my entry for last night already in the book, in my own square hand, with a line I have never written: Passenger for the Up road, one, and a name I won't copy here. The lamp flickered when I read it. I have put the book on the high shelf, and I am sitting with the window dark, waiting for someone to ask me for the right of way.