Colourful neo-traditional tattoo of a sleeping orange fox curled within green leaves and blue berries, on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sleeping fox curled in leaves and berries on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A fox lies curled up asleep with its tail wrapped round its body, set within a wreath of green leaves and clusters of blue berries. The fox is rendered in bold orange with soft shading and dark outlines, while the foliage uses layered greens and blue highlights. The design fills the frame in a rounded composition, with the tail sweeping down and off the lower edge of the leaves.

Neo-trad Botanical Thigh Fox Leaves Berry Foliage

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

You find the fox asleep on the hottest day of the summer, which is the only reason anyone on Hallin Island ever finds a fox asleep at all. It has settled under the rowan at the top of the lime path, tail wrapped round its body like a scarf tucked in against a wind that has not blown in weeks, and the blue berries above it have swollen so heavy they drop one by one into the grass. Nobody on the island keeps hens anymore. You sit on the harbour wall with a flask and wait, because your grandmother said a sleeping fox is a promise that the tide will turn in your favour.

Keep reading

The ferryman, Tobias Crane, says the foxes came over on the milk boat in 1931 and never went home. You doubt it. But when the ferry runs late and the mainland shows as a grey smudge on the water, you climb the lime path with a bread roll and a pencil, meaning to draw the animal before it goes. The leaves are turning at their edges, green going to gold in the ragged way it does before autumn, and the berries are bluer than anything you have seen across the water.

The fox opens one eye when you crouch, then shuts it again, unbothered, as though you are a late guest it has already decided to forgive. You sketch the curl of its back, the orange of its coat, the white tip of its tail like a brushstroke someone meant to lift away. When you look up the sun has slid behind the lighthouse and the hollow in the leaves is empty, still warm when you press your palm into it.

You leave the bread on the wall. In the morning there are crumbs and three blue berries set in a neat row on the stone, and a small print in the dew heading for the water. The ferry is already at the pier. You fold the drawing into your pocket and walk down to meet it, and it stays there, soft as a leaf, all the way across.