Black dotwork tattoo of antlers, a diamond and a rose with crystals on the outer thigh, shaded in black and grey.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Antlers, diamond and rose on a thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo across the outer thigh combines a pair of antlers, a large faceted diamond and a rose with crystal shapes rising behind it. The rose and leaves are shaded with stippled dots, while the antlers, swirls and dotted chain with tassels are drawn in fine solid lines. The design is in black and grey only and is centred on the thigh against a plain background.

Dotwork Botanical Geometric Thigh Antler Diamond Rose Crystal Leaves Star Swirl Chain Tassel Gemstone

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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 step, it gives under you. No, leave the lamp be. That's the lens my grandfather hauled out of the Skerra wreck in the winter of nineteen-twelve. Forty-odd pieces of glass cut like a diamond, and every facet throws a little of the sea back at you. Sit there by the rail where the wind can't reach your ears.

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The stag came down the headland path every October, a great old hart with antlers like a burnt oak, and he'd stand at the foot of the tower while the gulls quarrelled over the rocks. Nobody shot him. Mrs Calder kept a rose against her cottage wall, red as a fist, and she swore the stag ate the petals off the lowest bloom and left the rest for the bees. Folk said he was the island's watchman, that he'd walked out of the mist the year the Mairi went down, and nobody argued with them.

Then came the autumn Tom Pirie owed a dealer from Thurso more money than his boat was worth. He climbed the tower at midnight with a hacksaw and a sack, meaning to take the lens down piece by piece. The clockwork stuck halfway through its turn. Tom stood in the gallery with the glass in his arms, and out on the reef a fishing boat was steering for the gap where the light should have been. Below, the stag bellowed once, like a bell struck under water. Tom set the glass back in its brass cradle and wound the weights with his own two hands until dawn.

So when you see a stag at the foot of a lighthouse, don't ask him for anything. Wind the clock, leave the rose be, and the light will come round for you the way it always has. Go on, you can hear it now, that small click every half minute. That's the sound of Tom keeping his word.