Black and grey realism tattoo of an elephant head with a small square symbol on its forehead, placed on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Elephant head on the thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A sketched elephant head faces left, with its trunk curled downward and its large ear shaded in soft grey. Fine linework and stippled shading give the skin texture and depth, and a small square symbol sits on the forehead. The design is in black and grey ink and fills the upper thigh, with dark clothing at the top edge of the frame.

Realism Dotwork Thigh Elephant Trunk Tusk Ear Symbol

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 lorry brought her into the yard at ten past two, a bale of straw and one old elephant who had clearly decided the trip was a personal insult. Mr Varley said she'd be fine in the back of the coal shed until the fair moved on. I said nothing. I was the night porter at the Partick goods yard for nine pounds an hour and a flask, and nobody asked the porter anything.

Keep reading

Her name was Hettie and she had a square mark pressed into her brow, a black key-pattern like a maze folded flat, which Varley said his father had stamped there in Shanghai the year the ship came in. Hettie didn't care for stories. She leaned her weight against the shed door until the hinge gave, then stood in the rain with her ears out like wet sails, looking at the Clyde as if it owed her money.

I should have fetched Varley. Instead I walked her down the cobbles past the shuttered bakery, under the orange lamps, her great feet soft on the setts. She lowered her trunk to the kerb and lifted something from the gutter, a bent tin lid, and turned it over with the tip of her trunk like a jeweller checking a stone. At the corner of Dumbarton Road a late bus slowed beside us, the driver staring, and Hettie blew a long grey breath across his windscreen until he drove on.

We were back at the gate before the milk float rattled. She stepped into the coal shed without being asked, lowered herself into the straw, and laid her trunk across my shoulder for a moment, heavy and warm as a coat. Varley found us there at six. He looked at the pair of us, the mud on my boots, the tin lid tucked under her chin, and said nothing either, which is how I knew he'd been waiting for it.