Black and grey Medusa face with pale snakes coiling through her hair on the forearm, shaded in a realistic style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Medusa with snakes on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's face with closed eyes is shaded in soft greys, framed by pale snakes with black outlines that coil through her hair, with one snake head at the lower left. The snakes are left as bare skin, giving strong contrast against the dark shading of the hair. The tattoo sits on a forearm, with a blue checked fabric visible behind it.

Realism Forearm Snake Hair

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

Mind the kettle and hush now, because this is the bit where Maud Ferrier decided to shut her eyes for good. You'll have heard it was the sea that did it, or a curse off some travelling man's cart, but I was there in the back of the Co-op and I'll tell you what I saw. Teddy Clough, the ironmonger's boy, came in one wet Thursday with a dare in his pocket and a half-crown on the counter, and he said she had hair like a nest of eels and bet nobody would look her in the face.

Keep reading

Maud had come home that spring from the infirmary with her hair gone thin and pale at the roots, and she'd taken to plaiting it tight, then unpicking the plaits so the strands fell loose and writhed when she turned her head. She tied white ribbon through them, and the ribbon curled like something alive. Folk said she could turn a man to stone with one look, and since nobody wanted to test it, the whole parish learned to lead her by the elbow and talk to the air just beside her ear. Maud kept her lids down. She weighed out the tea, cut the bread, and ran the Thursday sewing circle with her eyes closed like a saint in a window, and she never once missed a stitch.

Teddy stood in her doorway that afternoon, cleared his throat, and said, 'Go on then, look at me.' She lifted her chin and didn't open her eyes. He waited so long the clock in the back room struck four, and then he said, very quietly, 'I'd rather be stone than laughed at,' and sat down on the step beside her, dripping, until the rain stopped.

Nobody in Holm Cross ever settled whether she could turn a man to stone. Teddy never tested it. He married the chemist's daughter and mended the church gate, and every Thursday after, he walked Maud to the circle with his hand under her elbow, her ribbons curled against the grey light, and the pair of them talked about the weather to the air beside her ear.