Black ornamental sugar skull tattoo with swirling filigree detail on the inner wrist, shown against a misty river scene.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate sugar skull on the inner wrist

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black skull sits on the inner wrist, with its face and features cut out in swirling, floral-style filigree lines that show the skin beneath. The linework is crisp and the black fill is even, giving strong contrast against the skin. The background is a soft-focus grey river with moored boats and a hazy city skyline, and the photo is taken from a slightly low angle.

Blackwork Forearm Skull Sugar skull Filigree Swirl Ornament

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

Put your hood up, the rain's no friend to a good cutting. Aye, that's Maren's stall, the one with the blue awning gone green at the seams. She cut stencils for the dockside printers, scrolls and anchors and such, until the winter a bargeman named Ansel Pike came up the steps with a sack of black card and a question.

Keep reading

He wanted a skull, he said, but not a grinning one. 'Make it dress up,' he told her, 'like the women on the Day of the Dead posters, all frills and flourish.' She took three nights over it, cutting swirls so fine the blade hummed in her teeth, and every eye socket she left as an open ring so the card would hold nothing but lace and light.

When it was done Ansel held it up against the grey water at the end of the quay, and the moored boats beyond showed through the holes in its face, red hull after red hull, as if the skull had swallowed the harbour and was giving it back in pieces. Maren said nothing. Ansel paid her twice her asking price and went off whistling, and she never saw him again.

That is the story, and you may believe the bit about the harbour or not. But if you go down to the end of the quay tomorrow, when the rain is letting up, hold a card to the river the way he did. You will see what she meant.