Black and grey realism tattoo of a bear's head and fur merging into a pine forest on the forearm.

Bear and pine forest on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large realistic bear's head looks out from the upper part of the forearm, with its fur fading into a column of pine tree silhouettes running down the arm. The shading is soft and detailed, with fine fur strands and misty grey gradients behind the trees. The image is a triptych of the same tattoo: two close-up views in black and grey and a middle view showing the surrounding skin tone, with the ink itself remaining black and grey.

Realism Forearm Bear Pine tree Forest Fur Wildlife Animal portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bear had been sitting at the top of the ridge road since the first frost, and by the third week of November the men at Hollin Mill had stopped pretending it was a trick of the light. Mara Dunne carried her father's dinner up the track anyway, a tin of mutton pie wrapped in a tea towel, because he had broken his wrist on the log chain and somebody had to bring him the shift money.

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She found the bear where the road bent into the Carrow plantation. It was not as large as the men had made it sound. Its head rested above the first row of pines, grizzled grey at the muzzle, and where its shoulders should have been the trees began, each one a dark blade of needles, rank after rank running down the slope like fur combed flat by a wind that never stopped. "I'm only passing," she told it. "I'm not taking your timber."

The bear's eyes were the colour of wet bark. It looked past her, down toward the mill, the way her father looked at the sky before a storm. She set the tin on a stump and, because she was twelve and foolish, she stepped close and touched the coarse hair at its jaw. It was cold with fog and smelled of resin, and beneath her palm she felt the faint shudder of something breathing very slowly.

When she came back down that evening with the envelope buttoned inside her coat, the foreman was waiting at the gate with a saw on his shoulder and a plan to clear the Carrow ground by spring. She looked back once from the bend. The bear was gone, and the pines stood a little closer to the road, as if someone had drawn a dark coat tight around the hill and was not yet ready to take it off.