A colour realism tattoo on the forearm of open red lips framing a grey space scene with planets, set within black geometric linework of a circle, triangles and stars.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Open red lips with planets and geometric linework

Geometric · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A pair of red lips is open to reveal a dark grey scene of cratered space with several shaded planets, one ringed. Black fine linework surrounds the lips with a circle, dashed arcs, triangles, small stars and a floating sphere above. The lips and planets are shaded with smooth tonal gradients, while the geometric lines are crisp and solid, with the red ink dominating the colour.

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 sawdust, it gets in the gravy. Now, you want the end of the Pell Brothers Travelling Marvels, and you'll have it the way Old Mags gave it to me, sat on a crate behind the ticket wagon with her hand over her mouth every time she laughed. She'd no teeth left to speak of, but she could still make a crowd lean forward.

Keep reading

By the close of the nineteen-fifties the tent had more canvas patches than canvas. The Fire Eater had gone to a council job in Leeds, the bearded lady ran a bingo hall in Rhyl, and Mags was left with the swallowing act, where she took a lit lantern into her mouth and blew it out again in a puff of smoke. Forty folk on a wet Tuesday in Melton Mowbray was the best of it. Then came the night the generator died and the crowd stood in the dark, grumbling, until a girl in a school jumper asked whether Mags could swallow the moon.

Mags didn't laugh. She knelt, opened her jaw wide as a church door, and the field went silent. Inside was a sky, black as a coal scuttle, pocked with craters, with grey moons turning slowly and one planet wearing a silver ring. Nobody breathed. Then the girl stepped up, peered in, and said she could see her gran's house. Mags shut her mouth, the lanterns came back on, and nobody bought a ticket that night. They went home quiet, each of them carrying a little piece of that sky in their heads.

Pell's son sold the wagons for scrap the following spring. Mags went to live with her sister in Skegness and was never seen swallowing anything again. But I'll tell you the last thing she said to me, and then you can get your tea. She said a sky is only ever lost when nobody bothers to look in. So look, and mind the sawdust.

More like this

Realistic red lips open to a grey cosmic scene with planets, framed by black geometric triangles and a circle on the inner forearm.
Open lips with planets on a forearm
Black and grey dotwork tattoo on a forearm, shown inside a circle, of a night sky with a crescent moon, two flying saucers and a row of pine trees.
Night sky with UFOs and pines on a forearm
Photograph of a sailing ship tattoo on the inner forearm, drawn with loose black brush strokes and ochre wash, with black ink splashes around the hull and sails.
Sailing ship with ink splashes on a forearm
Black and grey fine line tattoo of a skull on an upright arrow with overlapping circles and a small flower, on the inner forearm.
Skull and arrow with circles on a forearm
Neo-trad style tattoo of a cracked clock face with Roman numerals, black and grey shading with red slashes, on an arm.
Cracked clock face on an arm
Colour neo-traditional tattoo of a skull with a spider's body and fangs, with black legs and yellow drips, on the outer thigh.
Skull and spider hybrid on a thigh
Black and grey crescent moon with a face inside a dotwork mandala border, with a small sun on the toe, on the top of a foot.
Crescent moon and sun on a foot
Black dotwork and blackwork tattoo on a calf of three stacked balloons with grinning faces, two bats and a small figure hanging from a string.
Stacked balloons with skeletal characters on a calf
Colour neo-trad tattoo on a thigh showing Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas inside a heart-shaped frame with a spiderweb and red roses.
Jack and Sally in a heart frame on a thigh
Black and grey tattoo on a calf of an astronaut standing on the moon, holding a bunch of balloons shaped like planets, with Saturn at the top.
Astronaut holding planet balloons on a calf
Colour tattoo of a yellow crescent moon with a grid-patterned grin and a black sun motif on the forearm, outlined in black with red shading.
Yellow crescent moon with grinning face on forearm
Black and grey realistic tattoo of an open pocket compass with a compass rose, over a faded map design on a forearm.
Realistic compass tattoo on a forearm

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.