Realistic forearm tattoo of a bone-coloured skull with glowing teal eyes above a red and orange flaming skull.

Skulls and flames on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large skull with glowing teal eyes sits above a smaller skull that appears to be wreathed in red and orange flames. The skulls are shaded with smooth gradients and soft highlights, and the tattoo runs the length of a forearm against a dark background. The colour is vivid in the lower skull and the eyes, while the upper skull is rendered in muted tan and brown tones.

Realism Forearm Skull Flame Bone Fire

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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

Right, sit down, the lot of you, the bar isn't going anywhere and neither am I, more's the pity. You all remember Mr Pardoe's chemistry room, the one that smelled of burnt matches? Nobody told you about the cupboard under the sink. I'll tell you now, because I'm seventy-one and nobody can make me stop.

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In the spring of 1978 there was a boy called Tomasz Greene who kept a jar on the windowsill. Inside it sat a skull the size of a plum, bought off a man at Kempton market for four shillings. He'd dabbed its sockets with phosphorus scraped from strike-anywhere matches, and at night, when the lights went off, the two holes glowed like gas rings turned down low. Nobody believed him until Pardoe saw it with his own eyes and went as white as his coat.

Then came the fire in the kiln room, the one that took the bottom half of the east wing. Tomasz was the last one out. They say he went back for the jar. They say the flames rose round the bench like a red hood, and the little skull sat in the middle of it, grinning, while the light in its eyes went out one at a time.

They never found Tomasz. They found his jar, though, on the playground wall, cracked clean across, the eyes blackened and empty. And every year since, someone in this room has seen a light in the top corner of the east window, teal as a kingfisher. So go on, look up. I'll wait.