Sketch-style black and grey horse head tattoo across the back of a hand, with a green braided bracelet on the wrist.

Horse head tattoo on the back of a hand

Realism · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A horse head with pointed ears and a flowing mane is drawn across the back of a hand, facing towards the fingers. The linework is loose and sketchy, with soft grey shading that builds the muzzle, eye and mane. The ink is black and grey on pale skin, and the hand is photographed at an angle against a wooden floor and a pale wall.

Realism Hand Horse Horse head Mane

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 tide had already left the slip when Dad sent me down for the grey mare, and she was standing in the shallows up to her knees, looking at the coal barge as if it owed her money. Her name was Nell, and she had hauled for the Ruddock family since before my father was born. Nobody in Porthowen could remember her being afraid of anything, which is why the whole quay went quiet when she planted her hooves and would not take one step up the stone.

Keep reading

I sat down on the wet weed beside her, the way old Ruddock had taught me, and I did nothing for a long time. The gulls argued on the harbour wall. Her mane hung in dark strands over one eye, soft and loose as pencil smudged with a thumb. I had a stub of carpenter's pencil in my pocket, so I drew her head on the back of my own hand while I waited, because that was the only way I knew to keep still. The lines came out quick and wild, and where I pressed harder the grey pooled into shadow along her jaw.

When I looked up she had turned her head and was watching my hand, not my face. Her ears came forward. I held out the heel of an apple from my coat, and she considered it, and then she considered me, and then she walked up the slip as if the idea had been hers all along. Dad swore she had only been waiting for someone to notice she was frightened of the water, not the stone.

By the time the storm came in she was dry in her stall, and the drawing on my hand had worn down to a blur that Mum scrubbed at with soap and called a disgrace. I kept it anyway. It is still there, if you look at the knuckles in the right light.