Black and grey realistic skull tattoo on the side of a torso, framed by bold black brushstroke bands and a realistic eye beneath it.

Realistic skull with brushstroke bands on ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic human skull is the central subject, shown in soft grey shading with detailed bone texture and dark eye sockets. Heavy black brushstroke bands sweep across and around the skull, and a shaded eye appears lower on the torso. The image is in black and grey on bare skin with a plain dark background.

Realism Blackwork Ribs Skull Eye Brushstroke Abstract

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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

Ada Pryce had been scraping river silt from the skull for three days before she admitted the eye sockets were not empty. Something in the left one had caught the lamplight, a bead of dark glass or a stone the Thames had worn smooth. She set it on the bench at the back of the scene shop, where the flats for Macbeth leaned against the wall drying, and told Mr Oduya she would paint it for the prop cupboard.

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She did not paint it, not as he meant. She sat with a sable brush and a jar of lamp black and let the bone go grey where the light fell, feathering each crack the way her grandmother had taught her to fade a cloud. The strokes kept wanting to go wide. Every time she dragged a brush across the board behind the skull, the line came out heavy and ragged, as if the paint had been pulled rather than laid. Oduya said it looked like weather. Ada said it looked like the river was trying to get out.

On the last night of the run a stagehand found a second eye, painted small on the flat behind the skull and half hidden under the black bands. Nobody remembered painting it. Ada remembered, or thought she did. She must have done it in the hour after the matinee, when the cast had gone home and the shop smelled of turps and wet canvas.

At first light she carried the skull down to the river and set it on the lowest step at Wapping, where the tide would come up and find it. When she turned away, she felt the painted eye on her back, which was nonsense, because paint cannot look at anyone and bone cannot ask to be taken home.