Black and grey realism tattoo collage covering a man's entire back, with a woman smoking, an open book, film strips, a film reel and a figure holding a pistol.

Film-themed collage across a full back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A full back piece showing a collage of realistic black and grey subjects, including a woman with a dark bob holding a cigarette, an open book with a red marked page, film strips and a film reel. A man with an afro holds a pistol in the lower right, with a shadowy figure beneath him. The shading is smooth and detailed, with strong contrast against the dark background and the subjects layered across the shoulders and spine.

Realism Back Woman Cigarette Book Pistol Hand Man Collage

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 reel came up the back stairs at ten to eleven with a damp footprint on the lino behind it, and I knew before I cracked the tin that somebody had been at the Thursday print with a razor. Ten minutes were gone from the middle of the picture, the bit where the woman in the black dress sits on the sofa and tells the man in the good suit about a dream she had. Somebody had wanted that bit out.

Keep reading

Hollis Mayne came up behind me at half past, shaking rain off his coat and smelling of pomade and the cordite from the old war films he ran in the afternoons. He read his paperback in the back row between reels, always the same passage, lips moving, a pencil line under one verse. He said nothing about the missing frames. He only tapped the page on the rail of the booth and left it there, open, the red ink a smear where his thumb had been.

I spent the next hour splicing from the spare print, frame by frame, under the little brass lamp, and at the join I found a single frame that belonged to neither. A man with a chrome revolver held level at the camera, grinning like it was a joke only he got, and behind him the book lay open on a table with the same red stain spreading across the margin.

The house lights went down at eight the next night. I threaded the reel myself, and when the sofa scene came up I let it run whole, the cigarette smoke curling through the beam, and I did not look at the back row once.