Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a human skull merged with a spiral sea shell, placed on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and spiral shell on a limb

Dotwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A skull forms the base of a spiral sea shell, with the shell's whorls rising above the cranium and its flared opening curving around the side of the skull. The design is built from fine linework outlines and stippled dotwork shading that gives the bone and shell their volume, with radial hatching on the shell's opening. The tattoo is in black and grey ink, shown centred on smooth, pale skin against a dark background.

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

Shift your stool nearer, the lot of you, and keep your hands off my pipe. Now. You'll have heard how the sea took the drowned king of Hesk, but you haven't heard what the sea gave back. It gave back his skull, rolled up Corran Strand on the spring tide, and the fishwives buried it where the dunes meet the reeds, because nobody in Hesk had the stomach to be the one who dug.

Keep reading

Mawr the shell-grinder heard the sea talking that spring. Not words, mind, only the hush it makes in a whelk when you hold one to your ear. She went down to the dunes with a bag of lime and a bone-handled awl, and found the skull half-sunk in sand, and the sand had already begun to grow a shell around it. Seven whorls of pale spiral, tight as a fist, rose off the crown like a tower built by a patient child. The mouth of the shell had folded round the cheek and made a flared lip, like a hand cupped to catch something faint.

Mawr did not take it home. She sat beside it three nights while the tide counted out its breaths, and on the third night the old king's jaw opened, or the shell did, and out came a voice no louder than a lamp wick. It asked her to finish the count. So she did. Each whorl she scratched into the stone with her awl, one dot at a time, until the stipple laid grey tides across the bone, and when she reached the last whorl the sea went quiet and stayed quiet.

That is why Hesk never sends a child down to Corran Strand after dark, and why, if you find a whelk on the sand and hold it to your ear, you will hear something counting. Don't answer it. Pocket the shell and walk home the long way round the reeds.

More like this

Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a human skull held by a hand rising from a scalloped cuff, placed on the thigh.
Skull held in a hand on a thigh
Black and grey dotwork tattoo on the inner forearm showing a woman's profile with a hand raised to her face and a black cat sitting in a round hand mirror.
Woman and black cat in a mirror on forearm
Black and grey tattoo of a skull with a snake coiled around it, running up the inside of a forearm.
Skull and coiled snake on a forearm
Black and grey skull tattoo with peonies and leaves, shaded in dotwork, on the forearm.
Skull and peony on a forearm
Black and grey traditional tattoo of a skull with two daggers above it and dripping blood below, on a calf.
Skull and daggers on a calf
Black and grey dotwork tattoo of two skulls facing each other above a rose, on a forearm.
Two skulls and a rose on a forearm
Black and grey dotwork tattoo of an animal skull wreathed in a peony and leaves, placed on the outer thigh.
Animal skull and peony on a thigh
Black linework tattoo of a skull with a serpent coiled beneath it on the forearm, in a traditional style.
Skull and serpent on a forearm
Black and grey dotwork tattoo on the upper arm, a hamsa hand with an eye in its palm merged with a skull.
Hamsa and skull on the upper arm
Black and grey traditional cat skull tattoo with dotwork shading and bold outlines, on a limb with other tattoos partly visible at the edges.
Cat skull tattoo in black and grey
Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a shaded skull with a dotted triangle on its forehead and a geometric mandala below, on an upper arm.
Skull and dotwork mandala on an upper arm
Black and grey blackwork skull tattoo with dotted and mandala-like patterns on the upper arm, with the jaw open.
Ornate skull with mandala patterns on upper arm

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.