Realism black and grey tattoo of a wrapped nail cross with a John 3:16 band on the upper arm, near the shoulder.

Nail cross tattoo on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large cross made of two rusted nails, with the head of the vertical nail banded by an inscription reading John 3:16. Strips of cloth wrap around the crossing point and the arms, and the nails have fine shading and highlights that give them a three-dimensional look. The tattoo is rendered in black and grey and fills the centre of the frame against a light skin tone, with the shoulder curve visible at the edge.

Realism Upper arm Nail Cross

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 nails came off the Gannet's hull in the spring, when the gale tore the planking loose along the north shore, and my father said not one of them would go to waste. He sat me on the old anvil stump and told me to straighten them. Every one was rust-scabbed and bent like a question. I hammered until my wrists ached, and the strip of cloth I wound round my palm for grip grew stiff with brine.

Keep reading

Mrs Carrow came over on the Tuesday boat with a bundle under her arm. Her son had gone to the mainland to work the rigs and had not sent word since Lent. She wanted a cross, she said, but not the polished kind the chapel sold. She wanted something that had been used. I chose the two longest nails I had straightened best, laid them over each other on the bench, and bound the join with strips of her own old sailcloth, tight, the way you bind a split oar.

Her husband had cut the words into the head of the upright nail years before, with a cold chisel, the verse he had read at every funeral on the island: John 3:16. The letters had gone soft with weather. I went over them with a fine file until each stroke stood out again, and she watched my hands and said nothing for a long while.

When the boat came back for her a month later she carried the cross down the jetty in a biscuit tin, wrapped again in cloth. She pressed it into my palm and said that wind finds its way through any roof if you leave one window open. I hung it above my door. In winter, when the gale worked at the shutters, I could hear the nail-heads knocking softly against the wood, like someone who had come a long way and was asking to be let in.