Colour tattoo of a grey realistic elephant head framed by ornate mandala and paisley patterns on the outer thigh.

Realistic elephant with mandala on thigh

Realism · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A large elephant head faces forward at the centre, shaded in grey with detailed wrinkles and eyes. It sits within a ring of colourful mandala and paisley motifs in green, orange, pink, red and teal, with black outlines. The design covers most of the outer thigh, with the bold ornamental background contrasting the soft shading of the elephant.

Realism Neo-trad Thigh Elephant Mandala Paisley Flower Ornament

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, the kettle's on and nobody leaves until I've finished the elephant. Yes, Dennis, the elephant. You were all too busy copying Mr Fairbrother's sums to hear it the first time round, so you'll hear it now, from the top.

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The summer the monsoon came in early, Kishore's grandfather always said, the old bull Sundar walked out of the teak forest above Sawalgarh with river clay on his tusks. He wandered into the Kaur sisters' courtyard, where they were painting rings of marigold, peacock and teal around the doorways for a wedding. Every pattern they had, they laid round him in a circle, petal inside petal, until he stood in the middle like the seed of a flower. Nobody moved him, because nobody could bear to spoil it.

The rings stayed on him, the sisters swore, and they never faded, because each one had been painted by a hand that chose to stay. When the bull tired of the courtyard he climbed back up the hill, and in the dust where he had stood they found a single dropped pattern, a paisley curl the colour of a kingfisher's back. They pinned it above the door, and it's still there, Mrs Abbott. I've seen it with my own eyes.

So when you're standing in this hall with a sausage roll in one hand and a name you've forgotten on the tip of your tongue, remember the bull. Some things go round you whether you ask or not, and the kindest thing is to let them.