Colour realism tattoo of a Doberman's head on a limb, shown beside the blue line stencil used to transfer the design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Doberman portrait tattoo beside its stencil

Realism · Other · Colour · Photo

The left panel shows a blue line stencil of a Doberman's head on tracing paper, with dense, looping lines. The right panel shows the finished tattoo, a realistic colour portrait of a Doberman with its mouth open, ears cropped and a collar at the neck. Smooth shading in black, tan and dark blue gives the fur depth, and the dog fills most of the frame against the skin.

Realism Other Dog Stencil Collar

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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

Juno has never once come when you call her, but she is at the garden gate every morning before the milk van, ears pricked as if someone has pinned them there. Aunt Maud left you the walled kitchen garden, the greenhouse with its cracked panes, and a dog nobody in the village would take on. The solicitor's letter said nothing about the dog's habits. Nobody mentioned that she would take the hoe from your hands with her teeth if you dug too close to the rhubarb.

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The first month you think she is simply sulking. She lies across the path between the beds with her long black head on her paws, and when the postman, Dennis, cycles up the lane she lifts her lip at him in a way that makes him stop pedalling. You learn to walk around her. You learn that the brown tan on her legs looks like the colour of the clay you are always scraping from your boots, and that she watches the potting shed the way other dogs watch the kitchen door.

In October you finally lift the loose board under the bench in the shed, where her blanket is always folded just so. Beneath it sits a biscuit tin, and inside the tin are seed packets labelled in Maud's looping hand, each one dated and each one with a note: Runner beans, the north bed, Juno's side. Under them is a map of the garden with a small cross beside the rhubarb, and a single line in pencil. She knows where the things are.

That evening you kneel by the rhubarb with a trowel, and Juno comes down the path without being called and lays her chin on your knee. You dig where the cross is. The earth is soft and cold, and something wrapped in oilcloth turns up almost at once. You do not open it yet. You just sit back on your heels while she sighs, long and satisfied, and the garden goes quiet around you both.