Colour realism tattoo of a man's face with half the skull and decayed flesh exposed, shown on a limb in a wide view and a close-up panel.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic portrait with exposed skull

Realism · Other · Colour · Photo

A detailed portrait of a man's face is tattooed with one side replaced by a skull and red, blistered, decayed flesh. The shading is smooth and realistic, with soft grey-blue tones in the background and dark, deep shadows around the eye socket and jaw. The left panel shows the full piece on a limb against a blue underpad, and the right panel is a tighter crop of the skull and mouth area.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada, the Marigold has been three weeks out of Gravesend and the bosun has finally stopped calling me a landsman to my face. You asked whether the new figurehead is as grim as the dockers claimed. It is not grim so much as unfinished, which is worse. Mr Pell the carver worked half of her in pale lime wood and half in sea-blackened oak he salvaged from the old Tamsin, and he could never decide which side ought to face the wind.

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Mostly the men stand beneath her at the bow in the dog watch and argue about it. One side keeps its skin, the cheek ruddy and smooth, with an eye that seems to follow whoever has the wheel. The other side has gone to bone and rot, the planks split open to show the grain like the ribs of a dead gull. Pell says the sea does that to a face if you leave it looking forwards too long.

Last night, when the squall came up off the Cape, I climbed out along the bowsprit to lash the jib and found I could not stop looking at her. The lightning showed the rotten half clear as a lantern, and I swear the living eye had turned a little toward the hatch where Mr Pell sleeps. I told nobody. This morning I took him a cup of tea and asked, very lightly, whether he had meant her to look at the crew.

He said only that every ship must keep one eye on the wreck she might become. I have not yet decided whether that is wisdom or drink.

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