Venomous Ink

Today’s skull of the day is this amazing realism piece by Phil Garcia. Garcia is one of our favorite skull tattooers as his portfolio is filled to the brim with incredible post-mortem noggins. Even though skulls are a major image in Garcia’s work, he never makes the same tattoo twice. Today’s pick features a realistic snake emerging out of and coiling around a beautifully rendered skull. As snakes and skulls are also typically featured in American traditional imagery, it’s a nice change of pace to see someone like Garcia ink these images in a realistic style. The snake itself is a beautiful piece of work as the tattoo catches the predator in mid strike displaying his vicious fangs. The bright orange of his scaly skin stands bold against the color contrast of the blue highlights added to the skull. These underlying blue and green tones are another twist Garcia adds to many of his pieces to make the traditional off-white hues of a skull pop a little more off of the skin. Here at INKED we love when we see innovative and out of the box thinking in order to bring classic imagery into a unique light, which is something Garcia never fails to do. To see more of Phil Garcia’s beautiful portfolio, check out some of our favorite pieces by him right here.