Traditional style tattoo of an eye with lashes, a red skull in the iris and red teardrops below, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Eye with skull and teardrops on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A bold eye with radiating lashes sits at the centre of the image, with a red skull filling the iris and four red teardrops hanging beneath the lower lid. The linework is thick and black, with solid red fills and soft grey shading around the eye and drops. The tattoo is shown close up on the forearm near the wrist, with a grey concrete background and a dark sleeve at the edge of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the sea has been flat for three days, which the mate says is the worst sign of all. There is nothing to do but keep the lamp trimmed and watch the water for whatever it is trying to show us.

Keep reading

Old Abel in the forecastle has taken to drawing on the boys with a sail needle and a pot of Indian ink the captain bought at Valparaiso. Last night he did an eye on Pickering's wrist, right over the pulse, so the eye could keep watch while the hand did its work. He filled the iris with a small red skull, the same red as the lamp glass, and hung four drops beneath the lower lid. Pickering asked what the drops were for. Abel said they were for the ones who looked at it and did not blink.

I asked Abel whether it would work on the lookout. He said it worked on anyone who believed it, and that was the trouble with the sea, since everyone believes something by the third week out. Then he held up his own wrist, where an old eye has gone soft at the edges, the drops run together like paint in rain.

We raised the Azores at dawn. Pickering held his arm up to the light for the whole of the morning watch, turning it slowly, as though the eye were reading the horizon for the rest of us. I suppose it was. Give Mother my love and tell her the lamp is still lit. Your loving brother, Tom.

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