Black and grey realistic skull with a shaded rose above it, a small cross and dark scrollwork, tattooed on a forearm and shown from two angles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and rose on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two side-by-side photographs show a realistic black and grey skull with a rose above it, tattooed on the forearm. A small cross sits beside the rose, and dark curling scrollwork wraps around the skull. Soft shading gives the petals and bone depth, with strong contrast in the eye sockets and teeth.

Realism Forearm Skull Rose Cross Scrollwork

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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

You learn the ward at night by its sounds before its faces. At three the drip stands tick like a slow clock, and the lift at the end of Ward Nine sighs twice before it opens. Mrs Harrow in bay four has been asking for her husband since midnight, and you have told her the same thing every hour, that he is coming in the morning, though the night sister has already crossed him off the list.

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Reggie, the other porter, says the dead keep their own hours and you should not argue with them. You don't believe him, but you carry something anyway: a rose you bought from the stall outside the chapel, its petals gone the colour of old brass. Nobody needs a flower at four in the morning. The cross above the chapel door has been catching the security lamp all night, and it makes you think of things that should have been finished by now.

Her husband died at twenty to three in bay six, quietly, while she slept. Nobody woke her. You stand at the foot of her bed holding the rose and feel the stupid weight of being the only one awake who can do anything at all. You set it in the plastic cup on her locker, beside the water jug, and she reaches for it with fingers like tissue paper.

"He always bought them from that stall," she says. "Yellow, always yellow." You have no yellow. You have grey light off the car park and a rose that will be bin liner by Thursday. You tell her it was the best you could find. She holds it to her face anyway, and down the corridor the lift sighs again, and for once you do not go to see who is coming up.