Traditional black and grey tattoo of a snarling panther head with bared teeth and droplets, placed on a calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Snarling panther head on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A bold panther head snarls to the right, with bared fangs, whiskers and small droplets around the mouth. The thick outlines and flat black fills are typical of traditional tattooing, with grey shading and white highlights giving the fur and brow some form. The tattoo sits on a lower leg against a plain pale background, with the skin's fine body hair visible at the bottom of the frame.

Traditional Calf Panther Big cat Snarl Fangs Droplet Head

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 chapel has no roof now, only four blackened walls and a drift of wet leaves, so the rain lands straight on the flags and you can hear every drop. You have crossed the bailey in the last of the light with an unlit torch, your brother's wager ringing in your ears: bring back the tithe book from the vestry chest and the silver shilling is yours. Then comes a sound beneath the dripping, low and patient, like a kettle left to think about boiling.

Keep reading

You don't turn round. The carters tell stories about Lady Sewell's cat, the one she bought from a travelling menagerie and left to roam when her husband died. Black as the coal in the cellar, they say, with eyes like struck matches. When you finally look, it is already on the altar step, head low, lips peeled back from fangs as long as your fingers. Two drops fall from its jaw and spatter the stone like spilled ink.

You keep still, which is the only lesson your father ever taught you that stuck. The beast's gaze moves from your boots to the vestry door and back again, and you understand that it is not guarding the book at all. Someone has been sleeping in the gatehouse, leaving bread crusts on the sill, and the cat has taken the job of minding them. Those crusts are still on the sill now, fresh and warm, and you realise whose hands they came from.

You set the empty bucket down where the tithe chest should be. The panther watches you go, then yawns, folds its paws beneath its chest and lies down on the warm stone like a man who has finished his shift. Behind you the rain keeps falling, and the shilling stays in your pocket, unearned.