Black and grey shaded tattoo of two kissing profiles framed in a circle, on the upper arm.

Two profiles kissing in a circle

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two profiles facing each other in a kiss, one with dark hair in a long braid, set inside a large hand-drawn oval frame. The shading is soft and realistic, with smooth grey gradients on the faces and background and crisp black outlines defining the frame. The composition is centred and simple, with the figures filling most of the circle against a pale grey background of skin.

Realism Upper arm Kiss Profile Woman Couple Circle Hair Portrait

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 shell had come up from Naples in a crate that stank of tar, and Mr Adair held it to the gas jet and told me to find the layer that would take a kiss without splitting. Three bands ran through it, pink under white under a brown that looked like weak tea. You cut into the brown and never the pink, he said, or the face goes to nothing and the customer blames the carver.

Keep reading

The commission came from a Mrs Pryce in Edgbaston, who wanted her own profile and her husband's, close enough to touch. She was particular about the braid. It had to hang down the back in one heavy rope, and it had to be the sort of hair that looked as if it had been pinned up all day and then let go. I spent three weeks on it with a fine point and a magnifier strapped to my forehead, and by the end my neck ached like a bell rope.

The trouble was the husband's face. Every time I cut his brow, the line sat too hard against hers, as though he were pressing in. Mr Adair came over one evening, looked at the shell for a long time, and said, let the edge be the shadow. So I gave him no chin at all, only a rim of brown that curved round under her cheek. He became the dark side of the moon, and she was the lit part, and somehow the two of them fit inside the one oval.

Mrs Pryce collected the brooch herself. She turned it over under the lamp, said nothing, and paid in full. I kept the offcut, a curl of brown shell no longer than my thumb, and it still sits in my top drawer with the carving knife, shaped very nearly like a closed eye.