Black and grey realism tattoo of a woman's face and a skull across a person's full back, with a small rose tattoo at the nape of the neck.

Realism portrait of a woman and skull on full back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A person is photographed from behind, showing a large back piece of a woman's face in profile with heavy eye makeup, merged with a skull at the lower back. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft greys, deep black shadows and dripping ink effects running down the design. The ink is almost entirely black and grey, with a small reddish rose tattoo visible at the nape of the neck, and the composition fills the whole back within a dim interior setting.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lamp is nearly out and I will not shout over the back benches. You want the one about Maren Vell and the skull that came up out of the Sound with the tide? Good. Her mother painted it, you know, on the wall of the net loft: a face half turned away from you, and the bone grinning underneath as if it had been waiting its turn.

Keep reading

Maren was the only one on Skerra who would row out past the reef in the black hours, and she went because her brother had gone there in March and the boat came home without him. She kept her eyes lined dark with soot from the stove, so the men would not look at her and feel sorry. Every night she rowed to the shoal where the water runs thick as ink and the old drowned come up to breathe, and every night she came back with grey on her fingers and nothing in the creel.

The night the skull surfaced it was caught in the weed. She said it had her brother's teeth, and nobody believed her until she held it to the lamp and the ink ran from the eye sockets down her wrist, like tears that had decided to leave. She did not cry. She set it on the sill facing the sea. The next morning the boats went out whole, the reef was quiet, and the wind turned the way it does when someone has finally paid.

That is the story. Mind the stair on your way out, and take the lamp. It is the last one on the island.

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