Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a sleeping animal curled around a smaller animal, set in an oval frame beneath a heart shape, on a lower leg.

Sleeping animals in a heart frame on a calf

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

The design shows a sleeping animal with closed eyes resting over a smaller animal, enclosed in an oval frame. Above it sits a heart-like form with fur-like side shapes. The linework is bold and outlined, with fine stippled dotwork and short hatching for shading. The tattoo is in black and grey and fills most of the frame.

Dotwork Calf Heart Animal Oval frame Bear

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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

Edie, the bear is asleep again and I have stopped trying to move her. Mr Halloran swore she would be off the ship at Halifax, cub and all, but the timber is shifting in the hold and nobody wants to sleep near the cargo, so the mother has taken the bunk under the lamp and the cub has taken her. They lie in the cabin like two loaves set side by side, the big one's chin tucked over the small one's back, and the whole cabin goes quiet when they breathe.

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I found them on the second night out of Bristol, when the ship's dog would not stop barking at the hatch. Someone had stowed a crate of tinned peaches from a Cardiff merchant and the bear had got into it, cut her paw on the lid, and sat there bleeding syrup onto the boards. Cook wanted her thrown over the side. I held the lamp while the surgeon, who drinks more than he doctors, stitched the paw, and she never once lifted her lip at me. She only looked at the lamp as if it were the moon.

Now the wind has dropped and the sea lies flat as a slate roof, and I keep the porthole open so the air gets in. Through it I can see the sky going the colour of pewter. I am writing this on my knee with the cub's ear pressed against my wrist. She sighs before she settles, just the way your mother used to, and I thought you would like to know.