Black and grey realism tattoo of a detailed eye surrounded by ornamental scrollwork and flowing lines on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic eye with ornate swirls on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo of a realistic eye sits on the forearm, with soft shading across the iris, lashes and lid. Carved-looking scrollwork and flowing, wave-like lines wrap around the eye and continue along the arm, giving a three-dimensional effect. The dark fabric behind the arm keeps the focus on the ink, with the composition cropped close to the eye.

Realism Forearm Eye Iris Scrollwork Swirl

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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

Sit closer, and mind the lamp, because the oil is the only honest thing left on this street after midnight. You want to hear about the stonemason's eye. Everyone in Calder Lane knows it, though few will say so once the bells have gone.

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Old Ansel Brisk carved the fountain in Tanner's Yard the summer the river froze. He cut scrolls round the basin like frost on a window, and waves like a tide running backwards, and in the middle of it all he set a single eye, polished so the lamplight would catch it. The council wanted a saint. Ansel said a saint was only a face that had stopped looking.

Night after night he worked by lantern, and night after night the eye kept his hours. Men who crossed the yard late swore it turned to follow them. A baker's boy swore it blinked when the clock struck two. Ansel laughed at them, right up until the morning he found his own chisel lying by the basin, the handle warm, as though someone had been using it to correct the lines.

They say he climbed to the carving room that evening and never came down. The fountain runs clear now, and its eye is still open. If you pass it after midnight, mind the way it follows you, and whatever you hear rising from the water, do not stop to tell it your name.