Fine line black tattoo of an open pair of antlers framing a cluster of roses and leaves on the upper arm.

Antlers and roses on the upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A single-needle style outline of a pair of antlers curves across the upper arm, with a small bouquet of two roses, a bud and sprigs of leaves sitting at the base between the tines. The linework is thin and even, with no shading or fill, so the design relies on the outline and the open spaces of skin. The ink is black on a light skin tone, and the blurred background shows a wooden panel wall and a mounted deer head.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Antler Deer Rose Flower Leaves Foliage Bud

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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

Sit down, the queue will keep, it has kept for longer than either of us. You want to know why the stag never carried a bell, and I will tell you, but stop tapping that stamp against your palm. My grandmother said the white line on the bridge was painted by a man who had never watched a deer cross a river, so the deer simply ignored it.

Keep reading

The stag came down from the high pines every October, when the bracken turned copper. Its antlers spread wider than a cart door, and the guards at the Lessing crossing kept a ledger of its visits, date and weight, because the men of both villages placed bets on it. One autumn a girl named Ilse Marrow, who sold eggs on the Dunmere side, tied a bundle of wild roses to the left tine with red wool, just to see whether it would notice. It did not notice. It walked through the gate with the roses still caught there, and the two guards argued for an hour over whether that counted as a declaration.

Years later the bridge was closed, and Ilse's roses had gone wild along the fence. The stag came in the rain, found the gate locked, and stood there with the water running off its tines. Nobody opened it. Then Tomas, the younger guard and Ilse's cousin's boy, climbed the wire with a pair of shears and cut a gap wide enough for antlers. The stag stepped through and climbed the hill, and the wool fell into the mud where the two sides met.

Ilse's roses are still on the Dunmere side, and the wool is still in the ditch, faded to the colour of an old ribbon. Nobody has ever tidied it. That is the whole of the paperwork, and you may stamp it now.