Black and grey realism tattoo of a woman's face with curled light hair and dark lips, on the outer forearm.

Realism portrait of a woman on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic black and grey portrait of a woman with voluminous curled hair, defined eyebrows, dark lipstick and a small beauty mark, with the neck fading into dark shading below the chin. Soft blended shading builds the hair and skin tones, with sharp highlights on the eyes and lips. The portrait is centred on the forearm against a pale paved ground, with a dark sleeve at the top of the frame.

Realism Forearm Portrait Woman Face Lip Eye

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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

Harold had painted the same face for eleven summers, and by August it no longer looked like anyone he had met. He worked from a ladder on the back wall of the Regal in Hove, a tin of grey distemper at his elbow and a jar of cold tea he never drank. The hoarding was forty feet of pale board. The commission said only: make her hair soft enough to lift in a breeze, and make the mouth look like it is about to say something it shouldn't.

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He began with the hair because hair forgave you. Mrs Pargeter from the box office brought him a bowl of rainwater and a sable brush worn to a point, and said the gardeners at the bandstand had been cutting roses all week, so the air smelt of them. He built the curls in soft greys, thinning them towards the edges until they dissolved into the sky. The eyes were harder. He kept climbing down to check them against a photograph pinned to the shed door, then climbing back up again, certain each time that he had them wrong.

On the last afternoon a boy from the parks department stopped below with a barrow of clippings and called up that the face looked lonely. Harold said that was rather the point. The boy said no, it looked like someone waiting for a bus that was never going to come, then wheeled his barrow off along the gravel path towards the glasshouses.

Harold stood on the ladder a long time. Then he dipped the finest brush in the darkest grey and, very lightly, set a beauty mark beside the mouth where the photograph had one, and climbed down for his tea.