Colour realism sleeve tattoo on an upper arm showing a roe deer with antlers above a lynx face, set against a soft green and orange watercolour-style background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Deer and lynx realism sleeve on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A full sleeve tattoo shows a roe deer with antlers at the top, with a lynx or wild cat face below it toward the elbow. The animals are rendered with smooth, soft shading, fine fur detail and lifelike eyes. Loose washes of green, orange and yellow fill the background behind the deer, and the photograph is taken from the side of the arm against a plain wall and wooden floor.

Realism Upper arm Deer Antler Animal portrait Wildlife Sleeve

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

The barge Marrow had been moored below Hensby Lock so long that reeds had grown up through her cabin rails, and Nell Cawley had stopped cutting them back. Every evening the roe buck came down the water meadow to drink at the gap by the sluice, stepping over the cracked stones as if he owned the towpath and was only lending it to the rest of them.

Keep reading

The lynx came later, when the mist lay on the river like wet wool. Nobody in Hensby had seen her properly, only her pad marks in the silt and the way the moorhens went quiet. Nell left a tin of mackerel on the bow each night, and each morning the tin was licked clean without a sound to show for it. She decided that was manners.

In November the buck came down with a loop of fence wire caught round his antlers. He stood still while Nell waded out with the bow saw, the water cold to her knees, and he did not flinch when the blade bit. When the wire dropped away into the current, the lynx stepped out of the reeds and sat on the bank, tail curled round her feet, and the two of them looked at Nell as if she were late with the payment.

They went up the meadow together at dusk, the antlers pale above the grass and the spotted back moving beside them like a shadow that had made up its mind. In the morning the mackerel tin was empty on the bow, though Nell had not opened a new one, and a single tuft of grey fur was caught on the rail where the reeds met the boards.