Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull-faced woman with roses and a swallow on the thigh of a person lying on a white bed.

Skull portrait and roses on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A person lies on white bedding in a black lace top and strappy black bikini bottoms, with the upper body and face out of frame. On the outer thigh sits a large black and grey tattoo of a skull-faced portrait with curled hair, flanked by two shaded roses, a swallow in flight and a faint feather, with partly legible script above. A small outline tattoo sits on the side of the torso and a navel piercing is visible.

Realism Thigh Ribs Skull Portrait Rose Swallow Feather Script Woman

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

The skull came to me on a Tuesday, drawn on the back of a pawn ticket, and the widow who brought it wanted her husband's face hidden inside the bone. I told her I could do bone. Faces were another matter. Hair I could manage, the way it curled over the brow like smoke off a snuffed candle, and I gave those curls more shadow than was decent.

Keep reading

Roses went either side, two of them, half-open and going brown at the edges the way roses do once they have been asked to hold something too long. The swallow came last. She wanted it low and fast, heading out over the water, and she was particular that it should not look back. Above the lot I lettered a line she dictated from memory, and I got the spacing wrong twice before she let me start again.

I kept the sheet under the lamp in my booth on the pier all through the autumn, letting the grey settle the way it does. Sailors came in with their sweethearts' names and pointed at the swallow, and I told them the same thing every time: a swallow means you have come home, or that you are about to leave, and a skull means you already know which.

She collected the finished drawing in November, wrapped in brown paper. She held it to the window and studied the jaw for a long while, then said the likeness was better than he deserved. She paid me in pennies and asked for a second copy, with the swallow flying the other way.