Black ink design of a giraffe head and neck filled with swirls, dots and geometric panels, drawn on a white background.

Ornate giraffe head design in black ink

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A stylised giraffe head and neck facing forward, with ossicones curling at the top and large pointed ears. The face and neck are filled with spirals, scrolls, dots and angular geometric panels in solid black linework. The drawing is in black ink on white, with no shading or colour.

Blackwork Dotwork Giraffe Swirl Dot Scroll Geometric 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

Sit closer, you with the wet sandals, and mind the goat. This is the tale of Adu, the wood-carver's son, who was sent up the grey hills to find a shape for the new temple gate. He came back with no animal at all, only a head full of giraffes, and the elders said he would not stop talking about them.

Keep reading

He had followed the herd for three days below the escarpment. Each evening the tall ones stood among the thorn trees and ate the leaves the others could not reach, and each evening Adu sat with his knife and tried to copy the long neck onto a flat board. The lines kept running away from him. On the third night he stopped trying to draw the animal and drew the wind instead: the wind that bent the acacias, lifted the dust into curls, and shook the seed pods until they scattered into dots across the sand.

Back in the village the elders laughed at his board. 'Where is the animal?' they asked. Adu pointed at the spirals. 'Look how the head lifts,' he said. 'Look how it watches the river path while the body is busy with the leaves.' Nneka, who had cut the gate's lintels for forty years, pressed her thumb against the sharp ears and said nothing for a long while. Then she handed him her chisel.

The gate still stands. The giraffe on its lintel has turned its head back toward the hills, as if listening for someone coming home, and the children who grow up beneath it learn to count the dots before they learn their letters.