Small black giraffe head tattoo in a blackwork style on the side of a finger, next to a gold solitaire ring.

Giraffe head tattoo on a finger

Blackwork · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A small giraffe head sits on the side of a finger, drawn in solid black ink with stylised, flowing shapes for the mane and markings. The design is simple and silhouette-like, with bold areas of black and few fine details. The hand has red nails and a gold ring against a pale background, and the image is a screenshot of a search results page.

Blackwork Hand Giraffe 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

The stencil came with the lodger who never paid for his third week. He left a tin trunk, a smell of linseed, and a sheet of oiled card with a giraffe cut out of it, the head held up on a neck that stopped short at the edge of the paper. My mother hung it on the scullery nail and said nothing about it for a month, which in our house meant she liked it.

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The giraffe's mane was the clever part. Each tongue of black card curled back on itself like something blown off a wave, so when you dabbed paint through the gaps the lines came out soft at one end and sharp at the other. I was twelve that summer and mostly trusted with the brush for the back step, but Mother gave me the sign for The Seaward, the board above our front door, and told me to be careful with the giraffe because it was the only part of the lodger she'd ever wanted to keep.

I painted it on a wet Tuesday with the guests out at the pier. The paint ran where I pressed too hard, and I nearly scrapped the whole board until the wind changed and the gulls went silent, and the head seemed to lift off the wood like it had somewhere better to be. When the lodger came back for his trunk, he stood on the step, read the sign, and said the giraffe was the only thing in the house that had never once asked him for money. Then he took the stencil, folded it into his coat, and walked off towards the station without looking back at the sea.