Black and grey realism tattoo of a galleon at sea with a skull in storm clouds, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Galleon and skull in storm clouds

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large sailing galleon with a flag and billowing sails sits on choppy waves, with a shaded skull formed from the smoky clouds above it. The shading is soft and smooth, with strong contrast on the hull and sails and fine detail in the rigging. The design is in black ink and greys and fills a rounded area of the limb.

Realism Upper arm Ship Skull Cloud Smoke Wave Sea Sail Flag

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

Abel had the stove lashed and the coals raked low when the first green sea came over the bow and took the salt pork clean off the table. He swore, caught the rail with one hand, and watched the pork go skidding into the scuppers with the rest of the Vesper Hart's supper. Above the deck the storm had turned the sky the colour of wet slate, and the galley chimney was spilling its smoke sideways across the sails.

Keep reading

Mr Dacre called down from the wheel that the cook had set the heavens alight, though he was grinning through the spray. Abel didn't look up. He had seen the cloud take shape twice already, a heavy grey brow with two hollows where the eyes ought to be, hanging over the mainmast as though it had been sent to keep count. Dacre said it was only soot. Abel said soot had never kept a tally before.

Then the bow dropped into a trough and the chimney rattled, and Abel understood what the hollows were for. The Orrin had gone down in this same weather with the same smoke above her, and the men who saw her last swore she had been running for a reef that the cloud was pointing at. He dragged the iron pot off the fire, tipped the last of the salt into the embers, and felt the galley fill with a sharp white steam that rolled straight up and broke apart in the rigging. The wind backed a point. The skull slumped into ordinary cloud.

By dawn the Vesper Hart had her head to the north, the pork was a loss, and Abel was scraping the pan with a spoon, humming because there was nothing else to do with his hands. Out on the grey water the smoke from the chimney trailed behind them in a long, plain ribbon, and nobody aboard looked up at it twice.