Line drawing of a boxer dog head with a rose, pearl collar and scroll ornament, in a neo-traditional tattoo design style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Boxer dog head with rose and scrollwork

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil-sketched tattoo design showing a boxer dog's head in front view, with a wide-open rose to the left and a filigree scroll across the top. The dog's face is drawn with bold black outlines and light pencil shading, and a string of pearls sits at the neck above a shaded ornamental fan shape. The drawing is on pale paper, with faint construction circles visible behind the main design.

Neo-trad Dog Rose Scrollwork Pearl Collar Flourish Ornament

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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, sit down, and mind the cider, it's older than your grandmother's opinions. You want the tale of Hobb's boxer, the one with a jaw like a dropped shovel and the eyes of a bishop who has been told the collection plate came up short. He arrived in the Pennyfold orchards the summer the wasps got into the Bramleys, took one look at Mrs Ansell's rose by the gate, and decided it was his.

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Round his neck he wore a string of pearls that had belonged to Mrs Ansell's mother, bought off a travelling jeweller for three apples and a promise. Nobody could say how the dog got them off the hook in the parlour. They only saw him walk out past the pippins with them swinging like a lady's pride, then sit under the gate and wait. Men came to press their cider and went home thinking about that dog, and about the look he gave them, sorrowful as a deacon at a wedding.

The jeweller came back in September with his bag of tools and his lawyer's manners. He stood at the gate and called out the price. The boxer did not growl. He simply lowered his great head onto the paws, and the pearls settled against the grass like a little row of moons. Mrs Ansell came out with her apron still floured, saw the two of them squaring up over the rose, and laughed until she had to sit on the step.

So the pearls stayed where they were, and the jeweller went home with a bruised ego and a peach. If you walk up Pennyfold lane on a warm evening, you'll still find the gate, the rose gone wild over it, and a dog lying in the dust who is not guarding anything at all. He is only waiting for someone to ask him properly.