Black and grey realism tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder showing a bearded man wearing a crown of thorns above a veiled woman with eyes lowered, framed by flowing drapery.

Realistic religious portrait sleeve on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a large black and grey tattoo covering the upper arm and shoulder. A bearded male face wearing a crown of thorns sits at the top, with a veiled female face with lowered eyes below, and smooth draped fabric wrapping between them. The shading is soft and detailed, with strong highlights on the faces and gradual greys in the cloth, and the photo is taken indoors against a dark background.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Veil Drapery Portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The damp came through the wall of the eighth-floor landing at Saltmarsh House the winter the council stopped sending men to fix it. First it was a grey stain the shape of a cloud. Then, when the rain was heavy and the strip lights buzzed, people swore it had a face in it, a man with a crown of something sharp, and beneath him a woman with her head bowed and a cloth drawn over her hair.

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Mrs Adeyemi, who lived in 812 and had buried a husband and two brothers, said the face was only the wall weeping for everyone who had gone down the stairs and not come back up. The children dared each other to touch it. Nobody did for long, because the cold came off the plaster like breath.

Then Tomasz, the lad who collected the bins, took a bucket of lime and a length of old sheeting from the store cupboard and climbed up to the landing. He did not paint the faces out. He hung the sheet over them and tacked it to the ceiling, folding the corners so the rain ran off instead of through. When he came down his hands were white to the wrist, and his mother asked what he had seen up there. He said only that the woman had been trying to keep something dry.

The next winter the stain did not spread. The sheet went grey, then soft, and by spring the folds had set into the shape of a hood. Mrs Adeyemi still climbed the stairs with her shopping and nodded to the wall as she passed, and the children, who had grown bolder, left a single boiled sweet on the sill beneath it every Friday, for whoever was keeping the rain off.