Geometric outline tattoo of a large and a small elephant with blue, pink and yellow watercolour washes, on the side of an ankle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric elephant pair on an ankle

Geometric · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

A larger geometric elephant and a smaller one walk together, drawn in black linework with faceted, origami-style panels. Soft watercolour washes in blue, pink, orange and yellow sit behind and across the figures, with splashes spreading out beyond the outline. The elephants are centred on the skin, with the design filling most of the frame.

Geometric Ankle Elephant Watercolour Splash

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 ferry bell had already rung twice when Mira Adeyemi-Lowe found the last sheet of tide paper still folded in the drawer of the chart room. It was the old kind, pulped from reeds and never waterproofed, and the rain of the previous week had bled through it in long fingers of blue and rust. Her grandmother had used these sheets for messages that needed to survive the crossing to Greenwich Dock, and she had always folded them into animals, because the channel guards trusted animals not to be opened by mistake.

Keep reading

She chose the elephant because the drowned zoo's last keeper had once told her they walked in lines, the young always pressed against the flank of the old. She folded the large one first, sharp and faceted, every crease pressed with the flat of her thumbnail until the paper stood on its own like a stone. The blue wash came from the first rain stain, the pink from a tide note her brother had written and never sent, and the orange from a sunset she had seen only once through the glass roof before it cracked.

The calf took longer. She tried three sheets before she accepted that the small one should be made from the bottom corner of the message itself, the part that said only come home when the water drops. She tucked the words inside its folds so they would travel with it, then set the pair on the sill, where the morning light caught the splashes spreading past their outlines.

When the courier boat pushed off, she watched the two grey animals ride the chop toward the bridge, the colours already softening at their edges. The guards would never open them. Nobody opened elephants. But she knew the words were still there in the calf, dampening slowly, waiting for someone patient enough to unfold it.