Drawing of a fox seen from behind, sitting with its head turned, filled with red, orange and purple swirling linework and a white-tipped tail on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate swirl-patterned fox seen from behind

Colour · Flash

A fox sits with its back to the viewer and its head turned to one side, outlined in dark line work. The body and tail are filled with dense, flowing swirls and scroll-like patterns that shift from orange and red to purple, while the ears and the tip of the tail are left white or pale. The design is isolated on a plain white background with no body part or skin visible.

Fox Swirl Tail Ornamental pattern Animal

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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

Dear Tomas, the fox came back to the wall above the Scarrow cutting the morning after the snow stopped, and it has not left since. I thought at first it was a rust-coloured stone until it turned its head, and the light caught the swirls of its coat so that the whole animal seemed to be unspooling in the cold air. Mother would have called it a bad sign. I have decided it is a sentry, because the carters now stop to look at it before they start the climb, and they check their loads twice.

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The carters say the fox sits with its back to the valley and its face to the pass, as if it is waiting for someone to come over the top. Pieter from the salt train swears it watched him for an hour without blinking, and that its tail, which goes purple at the tip where the dusk gets into it, was the colour of the bruise on his shin. I told him bruises do not glow. He said then I should come up and look myself, which is why I am writing rather than walking down.

I went up at dusk yesterday with a lamp and a loaf. The fox did not move when I set the bread on the flat stone beside it, and when I looked back from the bend, the bread was gone and the white tip of its tail was the last thing I could see, lit like a candle going out. I have not told the carters that part.

Come in spring if you can. Bring the good ink, the one that dries black. I want you to draw it properly before the thaw makes the wall too slippery to sit on. Your sister, Ilse