Black and grey realism tattoo of a bearded man in a paisley bandana and round glasses, with cannabis leaves behind him, on a calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic portrait and cannabis leaves on a calf

Realism · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic portrait of a bearded man with curly hair, a paisley bandana and round wire-rimmed glasses fills the centre of the piece. Smooth shading and fine detail build the skin tones, hair and beard, while faint cannabis leaves fade into the background at the edges. The tattoo is rendered entirely in black and grey ink and sits on a calf.

Realism Calf Portrait Man Bandana Glasses Beard Curly hair

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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

You have never been able to draw a straight line, which is why Mrs Pryce at the chapel hall gives you the banner job for the Gala, and why the lads at Ffynnon colliery call you Scribbler. The lodge wants faces this year, not dragons. It wants Dai Ellis as he was before the fall, paisley bandana knotted at the back, round wire spectacles mended with pit-cage wire.

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Dai will not sit for you. He is at the bench by the window with his cough and his crossword, and every time you lift a pencil he tells you the light is wrong. So you work from the photograph pinned in the institute and from the stories the men tell over their tea. Emyr says the glasses were bent when the roof came in, and Dai laughed so loudly the others thought he had been hurt. Your charcoal is burnt oak from the stove, ground with a little linseed. You go slowly, layering grey until the hair looks like smoke rising from a banked fire.

One evening Dai comes in while you are working on his beard and stands behind you for a long time without speaking. Then he takes the spectacles off, polishes them on his shirt, and says, "Make the eyes a bit kinder than I was." You do. You paint them kinder, and he never sees the difference, only that he is looking back at him.

On gala day the banner goes up on the chapel wall. Sunlight through the old window catches the lenses you left blank, and for a moment the whole hall seems to lean in towards him, grinning, while the small dark leaves you scattered in the corners drift like soot across the boards.