Black and grey skull tattoo covering a man's back, with an ornamental frame and a triangle and eye motif above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and eye back tattoo

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large skull fills the lower and middle back, with black areas for the eye sockets and nasal cavity and grey shading across the bone. Ornate filigree scrollwork surrounds the skull, and a geometric triangle with an eye sits at the top of the design between the shoulder blades. The image is taken from behind in a bright indoor studio, with the model's head bowed forward so the face is not visible.

Back Skull Eye Triangle Scrollwork Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Master Hollis had the skull finished by Lady Day, every filigree curl of it, but he would not cut the eye at the apex of the arch. He stood on the scaffold with the chisel hanging from one fist and the wind off the fens pulling at his apron, and said the triangle wanted a steadier hand than his. I said nothing. I had been sharpening his tools for six years and knew what his hand did when he was afraid of it.

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That night I climbed up with a lantern hooked on my belt and a stub of chalk in my teeth. The shading had already gone down the bone like soot on a hearth, black for the sockets, grey for the cheekbones, and the scrollwork curled round them as if frost were creeping up a windowpane. I drew the triangle with a bent rule, set the eye inside it, and drove the point in slowly. Dust settled on my wrists. Somewhere below, a dog barked at the sexton's gate and then gave up.

In the morning the agent from the family came with his gloves on and his watch open in his palm. He studied the stone a long while, then me, then Hollis, who had come down the ladder without a word. The agent paid in full. Hollis handed me his chisel and kept his eyes on the churchyard path, where the grass was silver with dew and nobody was walking yet. When I looked up again the eye sat level with the lych-gate, and it seemed to me it had been watching the road the whole time.