Close photo of a traditional style tattoo of a green dragon head with orange-tipped frill, bold black outlines and yellow ringed eyes, on the lower leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Green dragon head on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a stylised green dragon head, viewed from the front, with horns, spiral-patterned eyes set in yellow rings and a fan of green frill plates edged with orange tips. Heavy black outlines define the shapes, with solid colour fills and some shading in darker green and yellow. The design is centred on the lower leg and fills most of the frame against plain skin.

Traditional Calf Dragon Horn Eye Scale

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 boiler in the old Victorian wing of St Aldric's has a temper, and at three in the morning it is the only thing on the ward that talks back. Nobody else is awake except Mrs Pargeter in bed nine, who is ninety-one and insists the building has a green lodger. I told her the pipes knock. She told me pipes don't have eyes that turn gold when the lights go down.

Keep reading

Last Tuesday the fire door on the back stairs swung open by itself, and a draught came up smelling of wet iron and cut grass. I took the torch from the drugs cupboard and went down. In the boiler house the grate was glowing, and something was folded against the coal chute, a head the size of a hatchback, horned, its fan of green frill plates lifting slowly with each breath. Its eyes were yellow rings with spirals turning in them, the same spirals as the peppermint swirls in Mrs Pargeter's sweet tin.

It had come, it said, to collect on an old bargain. Every century the hospital had promised it warmth in exchange for keeping the dark out of the wards. I went up to the porter's office and dug the ledger out from under a stack of 1974 linen returns. The last entry, in faded blue ink, read: Warmth supplied. Night watch to be kept by one who does not sleep. Underneath, someone had written my predecessor's name, then crossed it out.

So I keep the watch now. I walk the corridors with the torch, check the drips, and sit by the boiler with my flask while the dragon hums like a kettle. Mrs Pargeter sleeps through the night without a single bell. Every hour, from the stairwell, I hear a slow creak, like a frill plate lifting to listen, and then the building settles again.