Black and grey pen drawing of a longhorn skull with a small chevron on the brow, shown as a tattoo flash design with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Longhorn skull line drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A front-facing longhorn skull with long, curving horns, drawn in fine pen linework. Shading is built from fine hatching along the horns and the sides of the skull, with a small outlined chevron on the forehead. The skull is centred on a plain white background in black and grey.

Skull Horn Bull Chevron

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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

Tomas Ruiz found the skull in the dry wash below the cattle pens the spring the rains stopped, and he carried it up to the booking hall under one arm because nobody else on the Dunmore line would touch it. He hung it above the ticket window on two bent nails, horns out, facing the rails. The drovers laughed at him for it. The skull had a small chevron cut into its brow, neat as a stitch, and old Ines from the water tower said the cattle had always followed that mark across the flats before there was any line to follow.

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The bull's horns always pointed down the track toward Coldwater Junction, where the river ran under the iron bridge. Tomas got used to glancing up at them the way other men glance at a clock. Through the summer they held steady, and in October he noticed they had begun to lean north, a little more each evening, until on the night of the big storm they stood out level as a yoke and would not budge.

He held the nine-forty at the platform for forty minutes against the timetable and the complaints of the guard. At half past ten the water came over the Coldwater embankment and took the bridge clean away. The passengers who had been cursing him at the window stood in the dark and listened to it go.

The next morning the guard brought him a tin of peppermints and asked how he had known. Tomas only shrugged and pointed up. The skull was still turned north, the chevron catching the first light through the window. He never took it down. Each dawn he taps the glass with one knuckle before he unlocks the door, the way you would greet someone who has kept you out of the river.