Photograph of a watercolour-style wolf head tattoo in blue and black with ink splashes on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blue watercolour wolf on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A wolf's head faces forward, shaded in greys and black with blue eyes, set within a loose wash of blue ink. Soft splashes and dots spread outward, and a dark blue brush stroke sweeps diagonally down the arm. The image is a close view of the forearm, with the same design repeated faintly as a mirrored backdrop at the left and right edges.

Forearm Wolf Splashes Brush stroke

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

Dear Nell,

Keep reading

The fog came off the Dogger at four this morning and sat on the water like wet wool, and Pat swears he saw a wolf in it. Grey-blue, he said, standing up on his hind legs at the stern and then just not, the way a dog goes out of a doorway. I told him it was the diesel haze and the cold getting into his head. He crossed himself anyway, which for Pat counts as a weather report.

We've hauled three nights running with the nets coming up thin and the boxes light. The skipper talks about the Lindisfarne grounds like they owe him money. Still, the gulls have been following us in a long blue smear, and the water round the trawl boards turns the colour of ink when the sun hits it sideways, as if someone had tipped a pot over the side and left it to spread. I stood at the rail with the rope burn on my palm and watched a splash of it drift past, shaped like a shoulder.

Here's the thing I didn't tell your mother. On the last night, when the winch jammed and we were all cursing, the fog broke for maybe a minute and there it was on the swell, a head turned toward us, pale eyes, water sliding off its muzzle. Nobody else saw it. Then a sea came over and it was gone, and the only thing left was a dark streak like a brush mark where it had been.

I'll be home Thursday if the tide serves. Keep the lamp lit for me. Bring the tin of shortbread, not the biscuits.

Love, Tom