Black ink flash drawing of an ornate elephant with a paisley and dotwork patterned body, standing on a dotted ground, on a cream background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate elephant design with paisley body

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A stylised elephant drawn in black ink, its head and trunk filled with fine swirls, paisley curls and dot patterns, and its rounded body banded with scalloped and dotted motifs. The legs are thin and dotted, rising from a scattered, splashed ground ring at the base. The design is centred on a pale, speckled cream background with plenty of empty space around it.

Dotwork Elephant Paisley Ornament Swirl Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Fenn hands you the fine brush on the Thursday, the one with its hair gone soft from his teeth, and tells you the elephant must be dry by Saturday or the show goes on without it. It is smaller than you expected, no bigger than a tea urn, its head wreathed in paisley curls you copy from a torn magazine page pinned above the bench. Every swirl has to close before you lift the brush. Mr Fenn walks behind you with his pipe unlit and checks each one with his thumbnail.

Keep reading

All week the field behind the gasworks smells of paraffin and wet canvas. Children from Gate Lane come to watch you band the body with scallops and half-moons, and the older boys dare each other to touch the legs, which are thin as knitting needles and ringed with dots. You work late under a hurricane lamp hung on the hook of the caravan door. Each night Mr Fenn counts the dots on the bands and says nothing, which you take for approval, and each night the ground ring at the feet grows a little wider under your hand.

On Saturday the wagons roll out before the band has finished tuning, and the elephant rides off in a crate lined with an old eiderdown. You are paid four shillings and a ticket for the evening show. On Monday you walk back past the field and find it bare, except for the ring of ink dots pressed into the mud where the crate stood. Overnight rain has run through them, so the splashed edge has blurred into the grass, and it looks as though something heavy stood there, lifted its feet one at a time, and walked away.