Black and grey realism tattoo of the Good Shepherd holding a lamb and a staff, with a halo and sunburst, across a man's upper arm and shoulder.

Good Shepherd with lamb on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A bearded robed figure holds a lamb in the crook of one arm and a shepherd's crook in the other hand, with a haloed head framed by radiating rays and soft clouds. The shading is smooth and detailed, with fine grey gradients on the robe, fur and face. The design wraps over the shoulder and down the upper arm, with the figure centred on the outer arm and the rays filling the top of the composition.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Halo Sunburst Cloud Robe

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 ewe had been down since before light, and by the time you reached the top field the frost had turned the gate to iron under your glove. Your grandfather's crook hung from your wrist. Beyond the wall, the low sun broke through the cloud in long grey bars, and you counted them the way he taught you, one bar for every ewe you still had to find.

Keep reading

There were eleven. Ten you found by the dew-pond, bunched and steaming against the drystone. The eleventh was a lamb no bigger than a loaf, lying in the ditch with its legs folded wrong and its mother gone over the far stile to the lane. You knelt in the wet. The lamb did not struggle when you lifted it. You tucked it into the crook of your left arm the way the old man had shown you at lambing, its heat soaking through your coat, and you walked the long way back, not hurrying, because hurrying frightens them.

At the gate the farmhouse light was on. Your aunt stood in the doorway with a towel over her shoulder and did not ask what you had found. She only lifted her chin at the lamb and said the stove was still warm. You thought of the picture in the church hall, the one with the halo and the clouds stacked like pillows, and how it had always looked too clean for a field in February.

The lamb lived. It lived because you sat up with it on the kitchen floor until the birds started, feeding it warm milk from a bottle with a rubber teat gone yellow with age. When your aunt came down she found you asleep against the stove, the crook across your knees and the small animal breathing against your chest, and she left you there and went to put the kettle on.