Realistic dragon head with horns, scales and clawed feet in a shaded, colour style across the upper arm and shoulder.

Realistic dragon head and claws on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large realistic dragon head with open jaws, horns and scaled neck rises from the upper arm, with clawed feet extending down the arm. The scales and skin are rendered with detailed shading in greys and purples, with yellow-orange eyes and an orange glow around the edges. The design fills the upper arm and shoulder, and the skin around it is pale with some redness.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Dragon Claw Scale Horn Teeth Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm had told me to leave the bell rope alone until the snow cleared, but the thing on the north wall had begun to breathe again, and I could not sleep for the sound of it. From the cell window I watched its ember-coloured eye open above the scree, slow as a lantern being lifted, and I counted the scales down its neck the way Anselm had taught me to count psalm verses.

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Nobody at Saint Oswin's believed in it except the old cellarer, who kept a cracked slate in his cupboard with a drawing on it: a horned head, open jaws, five black claws hooked over the edge of a cliff. He said the dragon was not wicked, only hungry for the cold, and that it came down to the valley every winter to warm its feet on the chapel roof. We laughed at him over the wine. We stopped laughing when the lead flashing began to glow.

That night I climbed the tower with a lamp and a jug of the good oil. The stones were warm under my palms. The creature's claws had found the gutter and were pressing the lead flat, and its purple-grey hide shone in the lamplight like wet slate. I did not pray. I poured the oil into the gutter in one long thread and said the only thing I could think of, which was the name of the cellarer's cat.

The dragon blinked, lowered its head, and loosed a sigh that smelled of pine resin and iron. In the morning the roof was dry, the bell rope was still slack, and there was a single black scale wedged between two tiles, warm enough to hold in the palm for an hour after the sun had gone.