Colour realism tattoo of a man's face in aviator sunglasses with a cigarette, with fiery orange reflections in the lenses, on the upper arm.

Realistic colour portrait with sunglasses and cigarette

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large portrait of a man wearing aviator sunglasses with a lit cigarette between his lips, shown in close-up. The lenses reflect bright orange and yellow streaks and a small scene, and the skin is shaded with soft gradients. The background is loose sky-blue wash, and the composition fills the frame with the face.

Realism Upper arm Portrait Man Face Sunglasses Cigarette Reflection

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The reunion is in the function room of a hotel off the A419, and you have already decided to leave before the buffet. Dennis Hollis from Year Eleven is working the raffle table with a biro tucked behind one ear, and you pretend not to see him. Outside, the car park is the colour of weak tea, and the low sun does what it always did over the Wiltshire ridge: it turns every windscreen into a furnace.

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You find your keys in the pocket of a jacket you do not remember wearing and sit in the car with the door open. The aviators are on the dash, the only thing from the old days you kept. You unfold them and the lenses throw back the whole evening: orange light bouncing off the hotel glass, a flicker of yellow where the bar sign hums, and in the left lens, small and wavering, a girl from chemistry who once lit a cigarette behind the bike sheds as if she owned the whole afternoon.

Dennis comes across the tarmac with a bottle of prosecco under one arm and a raffle ticket stub between his teeth. He asks if you're going in. You tell him you're letting the light settle. He says it's the same light as 1994, and for a moment neither of you argues with that. He offers you the prosecco. You take the cigarette out of the jacket instead, lean on the bonnet, and let the smoke climb past the lenses.

When he waves and walks back toward the glow of the function room, you start the engine and drive out toward the ridge, where the sun is still going down red across the glass. In the mirror the hotel windows burn, and the girl from chemistry stays behind in the car park, lit up and waiting for someone else to notice her.