Black and grey realism tattoo of ornate plate armour covering the shoulder, upper arm and elbow as a full sleeve.

Plate armour sleeve on shoulder and arm

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A full sleeve tattoo shows ornate plate armour with embossed filigree scrollwork, cross motifs on the pauldron and layered metal bands down the upper arm. The shading is smooth and highly detailed, using strong highlights and deep shadows to give the armour a metallic, three-dimensional finish. The tattoo is entirely black and grey against a dark background, with fine scale-like patterning fading across the upper back at the edge of the frame.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Armour Filigree Scrollwork Cross Scale Metal

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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

Dear Tom, the plate came up from the cellar of the Corn Exchange on Tuesday, wrapped in sacking gone green at the seams, and Mr Pardoe wouldn't let anyone touch it but me. You'll laugh, but I nearly cried when the first pauldron came free of the rust. Under all that brown the scrollwork was still there, little curls like frost on a window, and someone had pressed a small cross into the top of the left shoulder plate.

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I've spent three evenings with wire brushes and a tin of linseed oil I bought from the chemist on Cross Street. The bands down the upper arm kept sticking, so I took them apart one buckle at a time, numbering each strap in pencil the way Father taught us with the harness. Mrs Tully from the library came round to watch and said the armour was a knight's, from before the wars, and that the town had bought it for a shilling in 1871 and never once asked why.

Last night, with the lamp turned low, I fitted the vambrace back onto the arm stand and the bands slid into place with a sound like a dropped spoon in a sink. Then I saw the fine scales along the back plate, which I'd taken for dirt. Each one had been cut by hand, hundreds of them, a row of small edges running out of the frame like a tide going back to sea.

The fete committee wants it in the marquee by Saturday. I've told them it isn't finished, and it isn't. Come home for the weekend and hold the lamp for me, love, and tell me whether you can see the cross the way I can.