Pencil sketch of a spade shape made from two skulls and jawbones with teeth, shown as a standalone tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Skull spade design sketch

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a playing card spade formed from two human skulls and a set of jawbones with exposed teeth, with the stem of the spade made from a long bone. The linework is fine and sketchy, with cross-hatching and soft shading to show the curves of the skulls and the depth of the eye sockets. The design is in greyscale on a cream background and is centred on the page with plenty of margin.

Skull Spade Playing card Teeth Bone

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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

Sit yourselves down out of the wet, and mind the crates. Rain on the tarpaulins like someone counting coins they don't have. You want the story of the spade? Everyone wants the spade. Old Tobias Quill dealt from a deck he swore was his grandfather's, and on the last night of the Michaelmas fair he laid down the ace of spades and said, gentlemen, that is the only card in the pack that tells the truth.

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The table was pitched between a cheese stall and a man selling clockwork moths. Across from him sat a stranger with a tin box of old jawbones, bleached white as church candles, which he tipped onto the cloth like dice. Every hand, the stranger won. Tobias counted the stakes twice, and twice the stranger smiled with teeth that didn't quite fit his face.

By midnight the rain had turned to sleet and the lamps were guttering. Tobias had nothing left but his boots and his name. He looked down at the card in his hand, and the spade on it had grown two hollow skulls at its shoulders, grinning up at him through the pips, and a long bone for a stem. He understood then what the deck had been waiting for. He pushed it across the cloth, the stranger took it, and the rain stopped the moment the card left his fingers.

Mind, they say the spade is still about the market. Some Sunday, when the stalls are soaking, a bone-white card turns up in your change. Don't play it. Pay for your cheese, and walk on.