Black and grey realism tattoo of torn skin peeling back to reveal printed text pages across the upper arm and elbow.

Torn skin revealing text pages on arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows skin ripped open across the upper arm and elbow, with the torn edges curling back to reveal pages of printed text beneath. The linework and shading are soft and detailed, giving the skin folds and paper a convincing three-dimensional look. The design is entirely in black and grey and wraps around the arm, with the tear running from the upper arm down over the elbow.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Torn skin Text Script Book Paper

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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

Tuesday. Rain since six, and the Calder has come over the lower weir so the warehouse on Canal Street stands in brown water to the sills. Mr Greenwood sent the tea chest round at noon with a note pinned to the lid: Save what you can. Not the green-spined one.

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I worked by the lamp until my fingers stopped feeling the bone folder. Most of it was pulp, ledgers swollen into loaves, but the grammar at the bottom had split along its joint and the boards had peeled back like bark. Where the calf tore away, the leaves curled up printed side out, the type still sharp in places, and I could read whole lines of declension on paper the colour of weak tea. Under the third gathering I found a leaf pasted in backwards, and on it my father's hand, copying out the one line he always wrote in the endpapers of books he bound: what the water takes, the hand gives back in another shape.

Greenwood came down at four for the grammar. He paid me in cash and did not ask about the leaf I had kept back, and I did not offer it.

Tonight I sewed the green one. I cut a flap of leather from its spoiled spine, glued it over the split, and ran the thread through so the stitch holes pinned the text beneath. Hold it to the lamp and you can still read the declensions through the grain. I told myself that was a fault. I am leaving it that way.