Black and grey skull tattoo made of wavy parallel lines that create an optical illusion, shown on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Striped optical skull tattoo on a limb

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A human skull is built entirely from undulating black lines on skin, with the lines bending and shifting to suggest depth and a warped surface. The linework is fine and evenly spaced, with denser black areas around the eye socket and jaw. The tattoo is shown in black and grey on a fleshy limb, with the skull filling most of the frame.

Other Skull Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ruling pen is still warm from your fingers when Mr Okafor takes it from you and holds it to the lamp, the way a cutler tests an edge. Not the lines, he says, look at the spaces between them. Every groove has to lean a little further than the one above it, or the copper will lie to whoever stands in front of it. You have spent three weeks in the Edgbaston works ruling hairline grooves across a plate no bigger than a playing card, and you have been proud of every one of them.

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Today's job is a test sheet for the bank's inspectors, a skull to be cut from nothing but curving lines. You work it from the crown down. The lines bow over the top of the head like wind on water, and they tighten in a dark ring where the eye should be, and then your wrist betrays you at the cheekbone. The groove slips, the whole jaw sags, and the face you have been building looks as if it has been left out in the rain.

He does not scold. He wipes the plate with spirit, shows you where the slip happened, and says it is the most useful mistake you will make all year, because the eye forgives a lump it takes for a hollow. Tell me what you see, he says. You tell him the skull seems to be sliding toward you out of the metal. He laughs, the short bark he keeps for good news.

The proof comes off the press just before dawn, still tacky, and you carry it to the window by its edges. Hold it at arm's length and the skull turns its face towards you. You step to the left and it stays turned, watching the door.