Red and purple tattoo of a giraffe head and neck on the upper arm, with the patterned body breaking into scattered fragments.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Giraffe dissolving into fragments on upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A giraffe's head and neck are tattooed on the upper arm, with the coat pattern rendered as irregular patches of red and purple. Toward the bottom the patches break apart into small scattered fragments that fade across the skin. The solid colour fills the upper part of the design against a pale background, with a gloved hand holding the arm at the bottom edge.

Upper arm Giraffe Animal

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

Nobody in Harrowgate Lane had seen a giraffe until the Pemberton brothers hauled the crate off the lorry, and by then the animal inside was already coming apart. Old Mr Ashdown said it had been packed in Mombasa by someone who did not like heights, which was why the neck had been folded twice and bound with rope that smelt of tar.

Keep reading

Mrs Okonedo, who kept the greengrocer's opposite, took on the unpacking because nobody else would. She found the head first, painted in rust and plum, its eyes already dulled by the damp. Every patch of its coat was a separate cut of painted slate, and the journey had loosened them, so that by the time she reached the shoulders they were rattling in the straw like dropped teeth.

She did not try to glue them back. She swept them into a biscuit tin and carried it up the hill to the old quarry, where the wind came through the gaps in the wall. Every evening that spring she opened the lid and let a handful go, and the pieces skittered down the slope into the gorse and bramble, until by midsummer the hill was flecked with red and purple that the sheep would not walk over.

The head stayed in the shop window. People came to look at it and said it was a shame, a lovely thing ruined. Mrs Okonedo only smiled and said a giraffe was a tall animal that liked to see far, and that the pieces had gone looking for the tallest wall in the county. Then she turned the sign to Closed and went up the hill to count how many had made it to the top.