Three-panel progression of a realistic colour portrait tattoo of a wild-haired figure with a wide grinning face, from purple linework stencil to finished shading on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic portrait tattoo, stencil to finished

Realism · Colour · Photo

Three side-by-side panels show the same tattoo at different stages: first a purple linework outline on pale skin, then partly shaded, then fully rendered. The finished portrait of a wide-eyed figure with a toothy grin and tousled hair uses smooth grey shading, dark eye sockets, and touches of green, purple and red. The face fills the frame, with a dark-shaded neck and collar at the bottom edge.

Realism Portrait Face Character Hair Teeth Stencil

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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 are the only sign-painter left in Marlow Cross since the bypass took the trade, so when Mrs Ashdown brings in a hoarding for the summer fete with no lettering on it, only a face she wants done life-size, you take the job. She has sketched it herself in blue chalk: a man with hair thrown up like a struck match, eyes too round, a grin that seems to have more teeth than a face should hold. You mix the greys and bruised purples at the bench under the strip light, and by Thursday the board is finished, those wide eyes staring out over the market square.

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Then the square starts to change. Boys dare each other to walk past it after dark, and come back pale, saying it blinked. The green at the mouth is a shade brighter every morning. The shadow under the jaw has moved, or you have painted it wrongly, so that the collar sits differently than it did. On Saturday you find blue chalk dust on your boots, though you have not been up the ladder since Friday.

On Sunday night you go out at midnight with a tin of turpentine, meaning to scrub the thing back to bare board before anyone sees. The square is empty and the hoarding is wet with dew. The eyes have turned from the market towards the window of your own shop, where your reflection stands in the glass with its mouth stretched wide in exactly that grin. You are still holding the rag when the church clock begins to strike twelve, and somewhere behind the boards, something very pleased begins to laugh.