Traditional-style flash design of a horned forest spirit deer with teal antlers above a banner reading Forest Spirit, a red mask and crossed swords below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Forest spirit deer with banner and mask

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A horned deer head with teal antlers and orange-red markings sits above a cream banner lettered Forest Spirit. Below the banner, a red mask is set between two crossed swords, with small white spirit figures scattered either side against a dark navy background. Bold outlines, flat fills and a limited palette of teal, orange, cream and white give the piece a traditional, emblem-like composition.

Traditional Deer Antler Mask Sword Banner Emblem

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

Dear Ruth, you will think I have gone soft out here, but I want to set this down before the sawmill men come up on Thursday. Mr Calloway paid me to chalk the big oaks in the Hollin valley for felling, and on my third morning I found two blades driven into the bank beneath the old beech, crossed like a pair of tongs. A red wooden mask was lashed between them, and someone had oiled it so it shone wet in the frost.

Keep reading

The stag came out of the bracken before I had got my breath back. Its antlers were teal, pale as river ice and furred with something that caught the light. Its face was orange and cream, with stripes painted along the jaw like a warrior going to battle. It did not run. It stood and watched my chalk the way Father used to watch a horse he had decided not to sell.

The little white ones came next, round-headed and no taller than a milk churn, drifting out of the ferns to follow the surveyor's cord. Each time I drew a cross on a trunk, three or four of them would lean in and blow on it, and the mark would fade to nothing. By Wednesday I had chalked nine trees and eight of the marks had gone.

This evening I struck the beech from the list and cut the cord. Mr Calloway can have my wage back. I went home by the lower path, and when I looked over my shoulder the mask was still hanging between those blades, and the stag stood under the beech with its antlers lit like a hedge in hard frost, waiting for me to be sensible. Come up in the spring if you can. Bring nothing made of iron. Your loving brother, Tom.