Traditional style tattoo of a snarling bear head in orange, red and black on the back of a hand, with dark patterned ink on the wrist above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Snarling bear head on the back of a hand

Traditional · Hand · Mixed · Photo

A bold bear head with bared teeth, open jaws and amber eyes fills the back of the hand. Thick black outlines and fine hair-like linework define the fur, with shaded black areas around the eyes and muzzle. Warm orange, yellow, red and brown tones dominate the bear against the skin, while darker black ink patterns are partly visible on the wrist above.

Traditional Hand Bear Animal Snarl Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, you will not believe what came down the valley road on Tuesday night. I was banking the stove when Gwyn Pritchard started shouting from the top of the row, and by the time I got my shawl on half the village was standing in the mud holding lamps up like it was a chapel funeral. There was a bear at the pit gate. A real one, dark as wet slate, with its head down and its jaws open wide enough to take a man's whole arm.

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Nobody would go near it. Dai Morris had his carbide lamp up and hissing, and in that light the bear's eyes turned the colour of old honey, amber and gold, and it looked straight at him as if it was counting his teeth. The dogs had all bolted under the coal wagons. Mrs Probert's boy, Tomos, who is nine and has no sense at all, walked out in his stockinged feet with a heel of bread and held it out on his flat palm.

I thought it would take the boy's hand clean off. It did not. It sniffed the bread, sneezed, and then sat down on the cinders like an old man on a bench. Tomos went chattering on about it being a fair bear, and when the travelling men came up the high road at dawn they said it had been chained to a caravan at the fair and had slipped its collar after the last hymn.

They took it away on a cart with a rope round its neck. Tomos cried all the way to the crossroads. I told him bears are only frightening when you are frightened of them, and he said, Mam, that was a lie, the bear's teeth are like rakes. He is right about the teeth. But when I looked back from the gate it was yawning, pink tongue curled, as sleepy as the cat.