Black line drawing sheet of five animals in a Celtic-style spiral design, including a bird, horse, stag, badger and wolf, suitable as tattoo flash.

Five Celtic-style knotwork animals sheet

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

The sheet shows five stylised animals drawn in black outline: a bird with spread wings at top left, a rearing horse at top right, a leaping stag at centre left, a badger-like animal standing at right, and a running wolf or dog at bottom left. Each figure is filled with flowing spiral and scroll motifs and interior contour lines, in a Celtic knotwork style. The drawing is in black ink on white with no shading or colour, and the animals are arranged across the page with generous spacing.

Traditional Bird Horse Stag Wolf Spiral Animal

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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

Tuesday. The wind has backed round to the north-east and the gannets are coming in low over the skerries like thrown knives. By noon there was a wolf on the slipway. I know how that sounds written in the log, so I will say it plainly once: a grey animal, lean as a fishing line, its tail curled up over its back into a spiral, sat at the foot of the stairs and looked at me as if I were late. Mrs Quoyle from the lower cottage saw it too and crossed herself, which she has never done in twelve years of gossip.

Keep reading

Aldous Pryce scratched them into the lens-room door before he went mad or retired, depending on who tells it. A bird with its wings flung wide, a horse up on its hind legs, a stag mid-leap, a badger standing like a man, and the wolf. Every body is filled with scrolls and knots so the lines run into each other and you cannot tell where one beast stops and the next begins. He said they were the island's old weather names. I took it for drink talking. Last night I stopped taking it for anything.

At dusk I lit the lamp and the stag came up the stairs behind me, hooves ticking on the iron treads. The badger shuffled into the oil store and settled among the drums. The horse stood in the yard with its head over the wall, snorting at the sea. The wolf went down the shingle and stopped beside a rusted ship's lantern half buried in weed. The glass was whole. I carried it up the tower in both hands and set it beside the lamp. When I looked down from the gallery the beasts were lying in the grass like dogs let in from the rain.

This morning the door was only a door, though the spirals looked a shade darker, like ink that has been wet and dried. The lantern is on my desk now. I have not lit it. I think they are waiting for me to decide who it is for.