Black and grey skull tattoo with shaded roses across the upper back of a woman seen from behind, wearing a white bra.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and roses across the upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large skull fills the centre of the upper back, with shaded roses on either side and above it. The linework and shading are soft and detailed, with grey tones giving the skull depth and dimension. The image is a rear view with the subject's hair falling over one shoulder, and the plain pale background keeps the focus on the tattoo.

Realism Back Skull Rose

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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

The skull came up in the herring net on the third night out of Lowestoft, grinning through the mesh as if it had been waiting for a lift. Nobody aboard the Morwenna wanted to touch it. Skipper Garrity said it was a sheep's, then a gull's, then went quiet when he turned it over and saw the teeth were a man's.

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I was nineteen and keen, so I took it from him and scrubbed the weed from the brow with a stiff brush. Under the grime, someone had scratched roses into the bone, or the sea had worn them there, pale petals curling round the eye sockets as if they were trying to keep the dark in. My mother grew roses against the harbour wall at Pakefield, and I told myself that was why I kept it in my oilskin pocket instead of putting it back over the side.

The weather turned on the fourth day. We ran for the lee of the Haisborough sands with the rail under and the cook praying loudly in Portuguese. When the boat finally came round in the grey morning, Garrity stood at the wheel with his cap in both hands and asked me whose skull it was. I said nobody's, that I'd found it. He said the sea does not give back what it does not want, and he would not look at me again until we tied up.

I buried the skull under my mother's roses that spring, with the fish scales still on my fingers. The bushes came out so thick the neighbours complained of the smell, and the Morwenna has come home full every season since, her nets clean, and Garrity has never once asked where the bones went.