Graphite pencil drawing of a large-eyed cartoon skull on a cloaked body holding a scythe, shown on paper beside a pen, for use as a tattoo design.

Pencil sketch of a cartoon skull and scythe

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing shows a large cartoon skull with heavy, hollow eye sockets and a toothy jaw, set on a draped, cloak-like body. A scythe with a curved blade rises beside the figure, and the shading uses dense cross-hatching on the skull and folds of fabric. The sketch is on pale paper placed on a green cutting mat, with a pen tip visible at the right edge.

Skull Grim reaper Scythe Cloak

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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 thing came up the lighthouse stairs at a quarter past three, scraping its scythe along every iron rung, and I knew before I looked round that it was the same visitor who had been circling the rock in a rowing boat for a week. Its cloak snagged on the lamp-room hatch. It swore at the hinge. Then it stood in my lamp room, two black eye-holes as big as saucers, and asked me, politely enough, whether I was ready.

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I was not ready, and I told him so. I had the wick to trim, the lens to polish, and Tom Halsey's boat still out past the Mare's Teeth in the fog. The reaper sighed a sigh like wet sand and sat on my stool, which creaked under him. He wanted tea. I gave him tea in the chipped mug with the anchor on it, and he held it in bony fingers, blowing across the surface with no lips to speak of, which I suppose was a kind of courtesy.

We talked about tides until the light was lit. He knew the tables better than I did, every turn of the Carrack race, and he confessed that his work was simpler at sea because the sea never argued. I asked him why he hadn't come for Tom Halsey. He said the boy was not on his list tonight. Then the fog thinned, the bow lamp came swinging out of the murk, and Tom was standing up in the boat, waving his cap at the light like a fool.

The reaper stood, folded his cloak, and leaned his scythe against the gallery rail, where it hung over the water like a weathervane pointing at nothing. "Trim your wick, keeper," he said. "I'll call again when the fog is thicker." He went down the stairs one rung at a time, and I heard the blade ring on every step. I did not sleep that night, though Tom Halsey slept like a stone.