Neo-traditional tattoo of a horned animal skull surrounded by leaves and red berries across an upper arm and shoulder.

Horned animal skull with foliage on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A horned animal skull, shown in a three-quarter view, fills most of the upper arm and sits among leaves, sprigs and clusters of round red berries. The skull is rendered with soft grey and beige shading, dark outlines and small red accents, while the foliage uses muted greens and deeper reds. The skin around the design is pale and the background is softly out of focus.

Neo-trad Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Skull Horn Animal skull Leaves Berry Foliage Sprig

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

Mind the step, the old well is loose, and keep the goats away from the bramble or they'll have your sleeve off. Right. Where was I? Ah, the ram of Hollin Vale.

Keep reading

He was the last of the high-horned flock, and when he died on the eastern slope in the hard frost of that winter, the shepherds did what shepherds do and left him for the crows. But the crows wouldn't touch him. They sat on the dry thorn and watched, and the eldest of them said the ram had asked for one thing before he went: that his skull be kept where the redberries grow thick, so the hedges would know him in spring.

So Orla Penhallow, who mended walls for the Queen of Tarn and had no patience for nonsense, walked up the slope with a pick and a sack. She found him curled in the snow, his bones clean as church candles. She carried the skull down wrapped in a wool shirt, and every mile she stopped and laid a sprig of rowan on the path, because her mother had told her that is how you pay a debt to the high ground.

She buried nothing. She set the skull on the hedge at the edge of her garden, and by the time the sloes were ripe, ivy had climbed both horns and the berries had come in red as sparks. Some say the ram still walks that hedgerow on wet nights. Some say it is only the wind. I say, go and look at the hedge yourself before you decide.