Black and grey realism tattoo of a skeleton embracing a sugar skull woman with a rose in her hair, covering the back, with sleeves on both arms.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skeleton and sugar skull couple on full back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A man's back is covered by a large black and grey tattoo of a skeleton figure leaning in to kiss a woman with sugar skull face make-up and a rose in her hair. Skeletal hands rest across the lower back, and the shading gives the figures strong volume. Sleeve tattoos continue down both arms, and the blurred indoor background keeps the focus on the back piece.

Realism Back Upper arm Forearm Skeleton Sugar skull Woman Rose Couple Day of the dead Skull Sleeve

Find an artist for this

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 on the ninth landing with a tin of ultramarine and a brush too stiff to use, because Mrs Okonedo from flat 9C wants the Day of the Dead couple painted on the stairwell wall before the residents' meeting. The skeleton is easy. Bone is only what is left when colour leaves, she told you, so you leave the primer showing and shade it grey until it looks lit from inside.

Keep reading

The woman is harder. Her sugar-skull face needs black filigree curling over the cheekbones like smoke, and the rose at her temple has to look fresh enough that someone might reach up and pick it. You work through Thursday and Friday. Downstairs a kettle shrieks, a telly shouts about football, and every evening Mrs Okonedo climbs the stairs with a flask and sits on the bottom step of the next flight, watching the lines go in without comment.

On Sunday she brings a photograph of her late husband in a plastic sleeve and asks for the skeleton's hand, the one resting at the woman's waist, to wear a ring. You say you can't tell whose ring it should be. She studies the wall for a long time and says, "Make it one that doesn't fit," then walks back down with the empty flask.

You paint it in silver, small and loose. The next morning the sun through the landing window catches it, and the skeleton seems to lean a little closer each time someone passes. By the time the inspector comes, the ring is the first thing everyone looks at, and nobody on the ninth floor asks you to take it off.