Colour realism portrait tattoo of a smiling bearded man with a full afro, wearing a light blue collared shirt, on the calf.

Smiling portrait tattoo on a calf

Realism · Calf · Colour · Photo

A large portrait of a smiling man with a full afro, short beard and light blue collared shirt, set against a blue background. The skin tones, hair strands and beard are rendered with fine, soft shading and detailed highlights. The vivid colour palette and close framing fill the calf, with the face as the clear focal point.

Realism Calf Portrait Man Beard Smile

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 board for the Ferris Street chippy had been waiting three weeks when Mrs Okonedo finally brought in the photograph, folded into quarters and gone soft as cloth. She wanted her late husband's face above the counter, the size of a dinner plate, and she wanted the sky behind him painted the blue of their wedding day rather than the grey it had turned to since.

Keep reading

I mixed ultramarine with a drop of white and then, because my first attempt looked like a municipal swimming pool, a thread of burnt umber to take the shine off it. She stood at my elbow for most of the afternoon, tapping the glass of the frame and telling me where the mouth should sit, which was wrong each time until it was right. Her husband, she said, had never once smiled for a camera that didn't ask him a question first. I painted the shirt in pale grey-blue, the colour of a dishcloth left on a line, and I took my time over the eyes, which were the part she checked twice.

When the lettering was dry and the board was bolted to the wall, she didn't say anything for a while. Then she told me the new fryer had arrived that morning and that she'd named it after the ferry they had courted on, which I hadn't known was a real ferry until she showed me the timetable pinned by the till.

On Saturdays she still stands beneath him with the vinegar bottle, and every so often she tells the gulls on the railings to mind their manners, as if he's still keeping an eye on the queue.