Pencil sketch of a howling wolf head with tribal-style swirls and flowing bands beneath it, drawn as a tattoo design.

Howling wolf with tribal swirls sketch

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a wolf head tilted back in a howl, with sharp fur-like strokes along the jaw and neck. Below and behind the head, large spiral and tribal-style bands curl and taper, shaded with fine cross-hatching. The drawing is in graphite on pale paper with no colour.

Wolf Howling wolf Swirl Tribal pattern Sketch

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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

Dessa had been drawing the same wolf on the backs of tram timetables since February, and the depot foreman had stopped asking her to put the pencil away. At quarter to midnight the yard was empty except for the hiss of the overhead lines and the smell of wet iron. She sat on an upturned crate under the sodium lamp by the sidings with a stub of graphite and the last sheet of the shift.

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The howl came from over the goods wall, low at first and then climbing, as if someone were hauling a rope through a bell. Nobody in Ardwick kept wolves. Dessa pressed the pencil flat and let it run: the jaw first, then the ruff of fur the wind kept lifting, then the spirals she always drew below the head, because their curl reminded her of the tunnel the 14 bus dived through under the canal. Her hand knew the shape before her head did.

When she looked up, a grey animal stood on the top of the wall, its throat working. Then it was gone, and the howl came again from further off, answered by a dog two streets over, then another. The sheet in her lap had three new bands curling down from the muzzle, shaded tight with cross-hatching, and they ran exactly the way the rails ran into the dark.

She folded the drawing into her coat and walked the sidings home, counting sleepers. At the gate she found a single chalk line on the post, drawn under the date by the foreman, who had been watching from the signal box all along. Dessa read it twice, then tucked it away with the others, because the wolf had never been hers to keep, only to follow out of the yard.