Black and grey realistic tattoo of a front-facing African elephant with tusks and trunk, covering the upper arm.

Realistic elephant on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large front-facing elephant head with raised tusks and a textured trunk fills most of the frame, with blades of grass at the lower edge. The work uses fine, detailed linework and smooth, layered shading to show wrinkles, skin texture and the eyes. The tattoo is rendered only in black and grey tones against a dark background.

Realism Upper arm Elephant Tusk Trunk Grass

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

Now sit down, the lot of you, and mind the kettle, because this is the bit about the elephant that came out of the fog at Scarrow Point the winter the lamp failed. My grandfather kept the light then. Nobody believed him, and he never once asked them to.

Keep reading

It was a grey October, the sort where the sea and the sky agree to be the same colour. Grandfather heard the thing before he saw it, a low rumble under the foghorn, like a cart taking a hill in its own good time. Then the marram grass parted and there it was, head down, ears spread like two wet sails, and a pair of tusks gone the colour of old piano keys. Its trunk swung left and right, reading the air. It did not look at him. It looked past him, up the tower, at the lamp room that had gone dark.

He had a tin of paraffin, a box of matches and no sense at all. He told it, the way you'd talk to a neighbour's dog, that the light was broken and he was fixing it. The elephant lifted its trunk and laid the tip of it against the glass, as if feeling for warmth. Grandfather climbed the forty-two steps, lit the wick with his shaking hands, and when he came back down the beast was gone. The grass beside the path was trampled flat in a line running out towards the water.

The lamp burned all that winter, and the ships came home. Every October after, when the fog rolled in, my grandfather set two cups out on the step, one for himself and one for whatever was out there needing a light. Nobody ever found tracks past the tideline, though he swore they went under the water and kept on going.