Black and grey realism tattoo of four men's faces in suits and caps, spread across the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four male portraits across a back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows four men's head and shoulder portraits arranged side by side across the upper back. Each face is rendered with fine shading, soft tonal gradients and detailed hair, and the suits and caps are shaded in greys. The photograph is taken straight on, with the skin and the white clothing at the bottom edge visible.

Realism Back Portrait Face Suit Cap 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

You unlock the back door of Halloran's at twenty to five, before the flour has settled and before the street lamps give up. The ovens are ticking as they warm. Your hands know the order of things: the starter out of the fridge, the tins greased, yesterday's rye pushed to the back where Mr Halloran keeps the rejects he pretends not to eat.

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Four men come in on the third Tuesday of November, which is odd, because nobody in Dunmere is up that early except nurses and milkmen. They wear dark suits gone soft at the elbows and grey caps pulled low, and they stand in front of the glass case as if waiting to be photographed by someone who hasn't arrived yet. The tallest has a thumb hooked in his lapel. The one nearest the door keeps shaking his head at something only he can hear. They want four white loaves, sliced, wrapped in brown paper rather than plastic.

You wrap them. The shortest of the four watches your hands the whole time, and when you give him his change he presses a folded note into your palm instead, the way a man passes a secret across a table. Outside the sky has gone the colour of pewter. By the time you turn the sign to open, the four of them are halfway up the high street, walking close enough that their shoulders touch.

The note says, in pencil, Keep the burnt loaf on the left. Under that, a time, half past six, and one word: Come. You look at the left-hand tin. It's the one you forgot, black at the crust and still warm. You cut the first slice anyway.