Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull in an ornate oval frame with a death's head moth and beaded chain below, on a woman's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull in ornate frame with moth on back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic human skull sits centred inside an ornate oval frame with scrolled, filigree detailing that rises into a point above it. Below the frame, a death's head moth is drawn with fine linework and shading, with a beaded chain hanging from its wings. The tattoo is entirely in black and grey, with soft gradients on the skull and dark, crisp shadows on the moth and frame, and it fills the centre of the upper back.

Realism Back Skull Oval frame Moth Filigree Frame

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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

So the frame came off the wagon with the widow's things, and the carter swore it had a face in it when he loaded it at Kendal. Sit closer, the fire's going down and the snow is at the shutters again. You'll want to hear what the inn's own people won't say about it.

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Mistress Ardell had commissioned her husband's likeness from a painter called Tobias Quill, who worked in silver point and charged by the hour. He set the man inside an oval of black oak, with curls and scrolls rising to a point like a crown. When it was finished, the husband went out one January night to check the ewes and never came back past the gate. The painter looked at the portrait a long time, then asked to be paid in full before the thaw.

That winter the moths came in early, the great grey death's heads with bones marked across their backs, and they settled on the frame in rows. Every morning the innkeeper's boy found a new one, and every morning a bead of wax had run down the glass, strung like a rosary. The boy swore that when he held a candle to the portrait, the face beneath the glass was no longer her husband's. It had gone bare, teeth grinning, the flesh gone from it as if it had never been there.

Ardell took it down and put it in the cellar, face to the wall. In spring the cellar door stood open, and the frame hung on the inn wall again, empty of any face but the skull looking out over the bar. Nobody takes the end stool until they've looked it in the eye. Finish your ale and mind the stair. The snow will be gone by morning, or it won't, and either way the skull will still be watching the door.