Black outline drawing of a dinosaur with a carousel-style rope pole, scrolled saddle and ribbon bows, on a sketchbook page, as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Carousel dinosaur line drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil or ink outline drawing of a cartoon dinosaur with an open-mouthed head, arms and legs stretched out, and a scrolled saddle on its back. Rope poles run diagonally behind it and ribbon bows tie around its tail, legs and one arm. The linework is clean and uniform with no shading, and the drawing sits centred on a sketchbook page.

Dinosaur Rope Ribbon Bow Scroll

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

Nell had the ovens lit by four and the first tray of bread out before the sky over the harbour turned from black to slate. Across the car park the fairground lay under tarpaulin, and the carousel stood with its canvas hood rolled back, waiting for the council men to decide whether it was worth the cost of moving.

Keep reading

Her grandfather had run the rides at Saltmarsh Pier until the storm took the end of it. He kept spare ribbon from the bows in a biscuit tin with the bread tickets, faded pink and green, and he called the painted dinosaur on the third panel Duke, because its scrolled saddle looked like a bishop's chair. Duke had never once gone round without some boy trying to ride him backwards.

On the last morning before the lorry came, Nell carried a paper bag of sausage rolls across the tarmac and found the bows had been cut loose with a penknife, leaving frayed stubs on the tail and the legs. She sat on the edge of the platform and tied a fresh one on Duke's tail with the knot her grandfather had taught her, pulling it snug until the ribbon lay flat.

When the men came with their clipboard, Duke had a bow on every limb and the bakery's first batch was already cooling in the window. The foreman laughed and said it would never survive the lorry. Nell said nothing, only passed him a sausage roll, because the ribbon was the one thing she had never let anybody take off.