Colour realism tattoo of a grey skull with glowing teal eyes above a smaller red skull, on the inner forearm against a dark background.

Glowing teal skull and red skull on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A grey skull with glowing teal eyes sits above a smaller red-orange skull on the forearm, with smoky, wispy shading around both. The skulls are rendered with smooth blended shading and bright highlights, giving them a glossy, three-dimensional look. Colour is limited to teal, red, orange and grey on a dark backdrop, with the upper skull dominating the composition.

Realism Forearm Skull Eye Smoke Fire Flame

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 lodgers at Mrs Pardoe's had been told the attic was let, which was not quite the same as empty. I took the room in October, when the season had gone out of Wrexcombe and the sea came up the front steps with each tide like a dog wanting in.

Keep reading

The skull arrived on the third night. It was not a skull exactly, more the shape of one pressed into the damp of the wallpaper behind the wardrobe, grey as a cuttlebone, with two eyes that burned a clean teal whenever the foghorn sounded off the point. Mrs Pardoe said her late husband had painted it there to frighten off the boys who stole brass from the moored boats. She did not say why a red one lived underneath it, or why it smoked whenever the kettle was on.

I spent a week trying to scrub it away. Vinegar, then lime wash, then my own good shirt soaked and pressed flat against the plaster. Each time the teal grew brighter and the smoke curled out from the edges like something getting up from a long sleep. On the Sunday the boatyard burned, the fire turned the harbour sky orange, and I watched the red skull below the grey one flare in the same colour, flames licking at its jaw.

Mrs Pardoe came up with a candle and stood in the doorway. 'He only wants a name,' she said, 'and you've been calling him nothing but a nuisance.' I took the pencil from behind my ear and wrote Tobias Pardoe, drowned 1931, on the wall beneath the eyes. The teal dimmed to the glow of a candle end. The smoke lay down. In the morning the harbour was black and quiet, and Mrs Pardoe was setting out my breakfast as though I had always been there.