Black and grey dotwork tattoo of two figures kissing, based on Klimt's The Kiss, placed on the side of the ribs.

Klimt's The Kiss on the side of the torso

Dotwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A dotwork and linework tattoo reproduces the two embracing figures from Klimt's painting The Kiss, with the man's dark hair and the woman's flower-filled hair and face shown in detail. The rectangular and circular patterns of the robes are built from stippled dots and solid black blocks, with fine outlines defining the hands and bodies. The piece is entirely black and grey and sits across the side of the torso above the hip, with red lace underwear and a white garment visible around it.

Dotwork Ribs Couple Kiss Embrace Flower Hand

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

Mrs Pryce kept a print of The Kiss in the hall of Gull Lodge, between the barometer and the bucket of sand for the fire, and nobody ever asked her why. The gold had gone brown at the edges. The two figures were so wrapped up in each other that the wallpaper behind them seemed the only thing left to notice. I used to stand in front of it with my case while the rain came sideways off the promenade and wait for her to find the key.

Keep reading

The summer I was sixteen, my uncle Teddy took the back room for a fortnight and spent every morning at the kitchen table copying the picture in biro. He had no training. He ruled the squares with a school ruler and built the robes out of dots, thousands of them, until his thumb went numb and the oilcloth was blotted with ink. He said dots were the only honest way to make a robe, because gold leaf was just a lie about light. Mrs Pryce brought him tea and never mentioned the mess.

On the last Saturday he gave me the drawing, folded in four, and went down to the pier to catch the coach before I was up. The man's hair was a black mass, and the woman's was starred with small flowers, each petal stippled on its own. He had drawn the hands with more care than anything else, and I think that was the point. In the bottom corner, in pencil so faint I nearly missed it, he had written: Keep the dots, lose the gold.

That evening I took the print down from the hall and hung his drawing in its place. Mrs Pryce studied it for a long time, then moved the brown frame to the back of the kitchen door, where she could see it while she washed up.