Black and grey fine line tattoo of an antelope skull with curved horns on the middle finger, with a small solid heart on the index finger, both on the hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Antelope skull and small heart on fingers

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of a hand showing a small antelope skull tattoo on the middle finger, with the horns curving outward and the jaw and teeth drawn in fine lines with light shading. A small solid black heart sits on the side of the index finger at the left of the frame. The black and white image is shot close up with a shallow depth of field, keeping the skull sharp while the rest of the hand softens.

Fine line Hand Skull Horn Heart

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 frost had got into the water trough again, so I was breaking the ice with the back of a hoe when Dad shouted that the dog was in the barn. Bess had the antelope skull off its nail and was turning it over in the straw. Uncle Ray brought it back from the Karoo the year before he stopped writing, and nobody in our house had ever wanted it.

Keep reading

Dad said burn it. Mum said bad luck, and it went in the cold room with the apples instead. I carried it out myself, horns first, the way you carry something you don't want to drop on your foot. The jaw was still whole, the little teeth in their row like a comb someone had left out in the rain. Snow had started, dry and small, the kind that doesn't settle so much as hang about looking for a place.

I walked it up past the sheep pens to the old gatepost where the hedge runs out. Ray's letters were in the kitchen drawer, stamps from places I'd never see, saying the rains had failed and the herds had gone north past the fence line. He wrote that they came down to the water at dusk and stood with their heads up, listening for lions. I wedged the skull between the post and the top rail, and the snow caught along the horns so they looked pencilled onto the grey.

By morning there were no tracks, only fine white dust blown into the hollows. Mum asked where it had gone and I said the dog had taken it. She didn't ask which dog. Ray's next letter came in February with a photograph of a dry riverbed and one line at the bottom: the ground there is still hard, but they still come down at dusk. I didn't tell her the skull was still on the gatepost, the frost settling in a thin white line along each curve.