Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate cat head in black linework

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A cat's head is drawn in profile, facing left, with its ears, eye and muzzle outlined. The fur is rendered with fine, flowing strokes, while the cheek, neck and ear areas are filled with ornamental paisley-like patterns built from dots and detailed lines. The drawing is entirely in black ink on white, with no colour and no body visible.

Dotwork Blackwork Cat Head Paisley Ornament Pattern Animal

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

Dear Tam, the loom has gone quiet since you sailed, and Mother says the shawl in the window must come down before the minister's wife sees the bare pattern. I have been sitting with the pattern cards on my knee, the ones with the teardrop boteh you liked, and I keep finding the old tom cat asleep among them.

Keep reading

He is the colour of wet slate and has taken to sitting on the warping frame each morning, as if he were the foreman. Last Tuesday he went for the bobbin with the indigo thread, and when I caught him by the scruff I saw that his whole face was a map of our shawls, curled lines and seeds, a scrap of crimson border running along one ear. Mother says I am imagining it, but I traced him with a pencil on the back of a card and it matched the Kashmir pattern exactly.

I have written all of this so you will have something to read when the wind drops off the Cape. Do not let the mate tell you the cat is bad luck. Bring me home a length of silk from wherever the ship puts in, and I will weave him into it, ears and all, and sell it to some lady in Glasgow who will never know where he came from.