Black and grey realism tattoo of a woman with sugar skull face paint and a hood, with a rose above her head, on an upper arm.

Sugar skull portrait with rose on arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A hooded woman with sugar skull face paint and dark eye patches looks out of the frame, one hand resting against her chin. Soft greyscale shading builds realistic skin, hair and fabric, while fine outlines define the scrolling face markings. A rose drawn in line work sits across the top of the hood, and the piece fills the length of the limb against a pale background.

Realism Upper arm Woman Sugar skull Face paint Hood Rose Portrait Hand

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 rose had crept over our back wall the summer my mother stopped speaking to the vicar, and by October it had claimed the whole of the potting shed roof. Nobody on Hollin Lane would touch it. Mr Okafor at number nine said a rose that grew that wild was asking to be left alone, so I left it, and spent my Saturdays pulling bindweed out of the beds instead.

Keep reading

On the first of November Mum came out to the garden in her grandmother's black lace mantilla, the one she had carried through Walsall in a shoebox for thirty years. She had painted her face with a sponge and a tub of cold cream, then drawn the scrolls round her eyes with my eyeliner, slow and careful, the way she used to iron a school shirt. 'The dead like to be looked at properly before they go,' she said, and I didn't argue, because she had asked me to hold the mirror.

She cut one bloom from the wall with the kitchen scissors, pale as candle wax, and gave it to me. A thorn caught my thumb. 'Hold it like you mean to give it back,' she said. I didn't understand until the following spring, when I dug a cutting from the shed roof, pushed it into the bed by the gate, and watched it sulk for a month before a single green shoot came up.

Now the rose reaches the gutter every summer. I still don't prune it. On the first of November I stand at the gate with my hands folded in front of me, the way she used to rest hers against her chin when she was thinking, and I wait for the light to go off the wall. It never takes long. Then I go in and put the kettle on for two.