Black ink drawing of a deer skull with large branching antlers on a pale beige textured background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Deer skull with antlers drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A detailed black ink drawing of a deer skull with a wide, multi-tined antler spread, shown front on. The skull and antlers are built from fine hatching and cross-hatching, with lighter areas left as paper, giving form and texture. The plain beige background has faint vertical streaks and the subject is centred with generous space around it.

Antler Skull Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Prior Osric,

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Forgive the smudged ink. The rain has come sideways across the fen for four days and the scriptorium shutters let it in. You asked after the stag skull Brother Tobias carried up from the reed beds in October. I have finished the drawing for the herbal margin, though I confess I spent far longer on the antlers than your brief allowed.

There are fourteen points across the two crowns, and I counted each one twice with the lamp held low. The left beam has a tine that bends back toward the skull as if it tried to hook something and gave up. Where the bone catches the light I lifted the hatching and left bare paper, as you taught me, so the brightness seems to come from somewhere beyond the page. Where the shadow gathers at the brow I worked the lines close, one over another, until the ink almost shone.

Tobias says the stag was old and had stood in the water the winter the sluices failed. He says the people at Haddon Staithe will not eat its kind now. I do not hold with omens, Father, but I have made a fair copy of the count, sealed it with wax from the chapel candle, and will send it with the carter on Thursday.

Brother Aldwin