Full arm sleeve in realism style on the upper arm and forearm, featuring a grey hockey mask, a Bates Motel sign, a gas mask and red accents.

Horror sleeve with hockey mask and motel sign

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A full sleeve covering the upper arm and forearm, showing a grey hockey mask above a Bates Motel sign, with a gas mask, a red and white bullseye and a bloody red and grey scene lower down. The shading is smooth and detailed, with strong contrast between the black background and the highlights on the skin. Most of the sleeve is black and grey, with red used for the bullseye and blood, and a line of text runs down the upper arm.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Blood Lettering

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

Nobody in Harrowgate ever asked why Len kept the pale mask on a hook behind the projection booth door. He called it lost property. In a flea-pit cinema that had shut in 1987, lost property is a generous phrase, but the man who sold him the lease took the cash and never asked questions either.

Keep reading

Every Friday Len ran the reels himself, a double bill with the sound turned up until the seats hummed in your back teeth. He claimed the grey face helped him think. Above the screen hung the motel sign he'd rescued from a skip in Scarborough, CRANE'S REST in buzzing tube letters, swinging on two chains whenever the wind came off the moors. The gas mask lived on the shelf beside the spools, and a tin of red paint sat by the rewinder, because Len had a habit of touching things up when the nights got long.

The last Friday in October, one woman bought a ticket for the late showing. She sat in row F with a flask of tea and no popcorn. Halfway through the second film she walked up the aisle, a red glow from the exit sign across her cheek, and knocked twice on the booth door. When Len opened it she was holding the mask by its strap, cut clean through, with a note in biro tucked under it: you've watched long enough.

She took his stool. He went down to row F and sat in her seat with the flask warm in his hands, and for the first time in thirty years the film ran without him.