Blue and black tattoo of a dragon head merged with a Celtic triquetra knot on a leg, with bold outlines and solid blue fill.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dragon and Celtic triquetra knot on a leg

Geometric · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A dragon head with a long swept crest forms part of a triquetra knot, a three-looped Celtic design. The dragon's body and tail curl away from the knot in heavy black linework, and the shapes are filled with solid blue ink. The design sits centred on a section of skin with a plain background.

Geometric Calf Dragon Triquetra Celtic knot Knotwork

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

Sit down, the lot of you, and stop pretending you're not listening. Old Harlan Rudd's boat went out of Carrick Bay the week the herring turned, and he took his grandmother's net with him, the one knotted in three loops that never seem to begin or end. You've seen it hung in the net loft. Count the loops with your finger and you'll find you can't get back to where you started.

Keep reading

The sea that autumn was blue as a bruise and nobody could find a fish. On the fourth night the fleet lay off the Skerry with their lamps doused, and Harlan felt the swell lift wrong beneath his hull. Something rose beside the boat. It had a head like a ship's prow and a crest swept back as long as a sail, and its eyes were fixed on the net trailing from his stern. It didn't want the catch. It wanted the knot, because that knot was the only thing aboard tied by hands that loved the sea more than they loved what the sea could pay.

Harlan had no words for a dragon, so he did what his grandmother taught him. He went hand over hand along the warp, tying a fresh loop as he went, one over and one under, three times round. The creature drew its head back into the dark like a tide going out. When he hauled at dawn the net was thick with mackerel, and the boat rode low and quiet.

Now the boys ask me if it's true. I tell them to look at the net loft wall, where the tinker painted that dragon in sloe and indigo years ago. Where its jaw meets the knot, the colour spills over the black line, and that is where it swam back under the Skerry. Fetch the lamp, Tomas, and mind the third loop. It's the one that holds everything.