White cut-out stencil of a seated mythical creature with a flowing mane and a curled tail, on pale blue stencil film, for a tattoo design.

Seated mythical creature silhouette stencil

Colour · Flash

A white silhouette of a seated, winged-less mythical creature with a flowing mane, pointed ears, a long curled tail and outstretched limbs, cut from pale blue stencil film. The outline is smooth and solid with no interior shading or linework. The image is a flat, evenly lit photograph of the stencil on a light surface, with the design filling most of the frame.

Mane Tail Silhouette Stencil

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

The woman came through Hallam Cross on a wet Tuesday with a roll of pale blue film under her arm and nothing else I could name. Her form said sign painter. When I asked what she meant to paint, she said the thing that sits outside the gate. There was no gate at Hallam Cross, only a barrier arm that stuck every time it rained, so I told her so, and she smiled as if I had passed a test I hadn't known I was sitting.

Keep reading

She unrolled a sheet across my counter. Cut out of the film was a seated creature with a mane swept back from its brow, ears pricked, its long tail curled round over one haunch and its legs stretched out as though it had all the time in the world. "Every crossing has one," she said. "It sits there until someone answers its question. Then it lets them through."

The rules at my hatch are simple. I ask, you answer, or you turn back up the valley. I asked her what it was she wanted to get across. She tapped the creature's paw and said, "What walks on four legs at morning, two at noon, and sends its papers ahead of it?" I didn't have an answer. My shift ended at six, and I went home with the question folded inside my coat like a receipt.

In the morning the stencil was on the inside of the barrier post, white paint through blue film, the mane and the curled tail sharp in the early light. The arm lifted for the first lorry without a squeal. I still haven't found the answer. But I wait a moment longer than the rules allow before I lift the arm for anyone now, and most mornings somebody says something that makes me smile.