Black and grey pencil drawing of a monstrous skull with an open jaw and long jagged teeth, shown as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Monstrous skull with open jaw

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil-drawn monstrous skull with a large rounded cranium and deep shadowed eye hollows. The elongated jaw hangs open to show long, jagged teeth, with heavy hatching and cross-hatching that gives the bone a textured, ragged look. The drawing is in black and grey on a plain white background, shown as a tall, centred single figure.

Skull Monster Teeth Sketch

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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 Marine Ballroom in Saltmere had kept its carnival skull since the summer the travelling fair went bust, and nobody could remember who had painted the teeth. It hung above the bandstand on a chain, grinning down at the dancers, its jaw hinged so it could be dropped open for the Hallowe'en dance. Dora Maddock, who ran the cloakroom for ten shillings a week, was the only one who had ever climbed up to oil that hinge.

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On the night of the dance in 1958 the jaw stuck halfway. Sid Pardoe, the drummer, swore it was bad luck to leave it half open, so Dora stood on a chair with a hairpin and her mother's thread, working the catch while the Ambassadors played 'Stranger in Paradise' three times over. Below her, couples turned slowly under the paper streamers, and the skull's shadow slid across their faces like a tide coming in.

Just before midnight the band struck up 'Goodnight Sweetheart' and the jaw swung wide on its own. Light from the mirror ball ran along the chipped piano-key teeth. A girl in a green frock shrieked, then laughed, and the laugh travelled round the room until everyone was clapping. Dora was not laughing. Inside the hollow skull something small and metal rang twice, like the bell on her cloakroom counter.

She climbed down and went to the cloakroom, where forty years of lost property had gone unclaimed on the top shelf. Behind the umbrellas she found a single brown leather glove, its fingers curled as if still holding a dance card. She carried it back to the bandstand, reached up, and laid it gently on the lower teeth. The jaw closed with a soft click, and the ballroom, for the first time in a generation, went quiet.