Black and grey drawing of two skulls, roses and an all-seeing eye in a triangle, shaded in neo-traditional style on paper.

Skulls, roses and all-seeing eye design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A hand-drawn tattoo design on paper showing two skulls with pearl strands, a cluster of shaded roses and leaves, and a central eye inside a triangle with radiating lines. The linework is bold and the shading uses fine stippling and graded greys to give the skulls and petals depth. The drawing is entirely black and grey on a warm, yellowed paper background.

Neo-trad Skull Rose Eye Triangle Pearl Leaves

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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

Mind the step, it's older than your grandmother. There, that's it. Now listen, because I'll only tell this once before the bells go and the rain comes in off the river.

Keep reading

Down by Marrow Lane, in the years when the gas lamps still hissed, there lived a painter called Ada Penrose who drew for the sailors. Every man who shipped out wanted something to carry him home, so she gave them roses with the thorns left in and skulls with pearls strung across their brows like a rosary. Two brothers came to her one wet October, Tomas and Lew, both bound for the same boat. She drew each of them a skull. Lew laughed at his. Tomas did not.

Now the eye. Ada painted that herself, in the middle, inside its triangle, because she said somebody in this city ought to be watching the watchers. Tomas took his drawing and went down to the docks at midnight. He owed money to the man who kept the warehouse ledgers, and he meant to settle it by moving crates that were not his. The eye, they say, never closes. It saw him loosen the boards, and it saw Lew come running after him with the lantern held high.

What passed on the quay is nobody's business but the river's. I'll tell you only this: the lantern was found next morning, still lit, sitting on the bottom step, and the two skulls on Ada's paper had turned their heads to face one another. She never redrew them. She sold the picture for a shilling to the first man who asked, and told him to hang it where the lamplight falls on the eye. Go on, put your coin on the table. That's the price of a good story round here.