Black and grey realism chest tattoo of a winged woman and a skull with a wing, with a small gold cross and geometric lines, spreading over the chest and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged woman and skull on a chest

Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A large realistic tattoo covers the chest and extends onto the shoulder, showing a woman's face with a wing above, a skull with a feathered wing, and two hands holding a shield-shaped form with a gold cross. Fine shading and soft grey gradients build depth in the face, skull and feathers, while sharp geometric lines frame the design on both sides. Apart from the small gold cross, the ink is black and grey, and the image is a close, well-lit crop of the upper body.

Realism Geometric Chest Shoulder Winged figure Woman Face Skull Wing Hand Cross Shield Geometric line

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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

Mind the third stair, it gives under a man's weight, and the last lodger swore he would sue the sea for it. Sit nearer the grate. The wind off Scarrow Bay gets into every sash in this house, and into the throat too, if you let it talk long enough.

Keep reading

There was a painter lodged in the attic the winter after the Hollis boy drowned. Silas Vane, he called himself, though Mrs Thorne said his name was on no ship's manifest she had ever read. The vicar had hired him to paint angels across the chapel ceiling and paid him in promises and cold mutton, so he worked in the attic instead, by one candle. He painted a woman with her wings lifted and her face turned down, as if she were listening for something under the floorboards. He gave her Mrs Thorne's own hands, folded round a little shield of tin, and on the tin he laid a cross of gold leaf he had pried from the altar rail.

Then came the skull. He painted it into the second wing feather by feather, so soft and grey that Mrs Thorne swore she could feel them stir when she dusted the landing. Every morning there was down on the washstand. Every morning the skull had its teeth a little more bared, and it wore the look of her husband Ned, who had gone out in the lifeboat and never come back up the slipway.

On the last night of the month the candle guttered and the attic went quiet. Mrs Thorne climbed up with a tray and found the door already open. The bed was unslept in and the room was empty, but on the plaster wall a woman stood with her shield and her skull, both wings spread wide, and the gold cross caught the light of her lamp like something still warm. And if you hear wings on the landing tonight, you leave that door shut.