Realistic black and grey sphynx cat head with yellow eyes tattooed on the side of a neck, set against dark ornamental linework.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sphynx cat head on the neck

Realism · Neck · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows the head of a hairless sphynx cat with wrinkled skin, turned towards the viewer at an angle. Smooth, detailed shading in greys and black gives the fur-less skin and face a three-dimensional look, and the eyes are the only strong colour, rendered in yellow-green. Dark, spiky linework behind the head frames the design against the skin of the neck.

Realism Neck Cat Sphynx cat

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

Nobody aboard the Mercy Vane liked the cat, and nobody could say where she had come from. Bosun Tallow swore she walked up the gangway at Hull with a herring head in her jaws and a look that dared us to name her. She had no fur to speak of, only a wrinkled grey hide like an old chamois glove, and she sat on the capstan through the heat of the Bay as if the sun owed her money.

Keep reading

The night we lost the foremast light, the sea went black as tar and the watch could not find the horizon. I was on the fo'c'sle with a dead lantern in my fist when two yellow-green eyes opened in the dark ahead of me, steady as a pair of coins held up to a flame. She turned her head slowly, the way a helmsman turns a wheel, then dropped off the bow rail and padded aft along the scuppers. I followed because there was nothing else to follow.

She stopped by the spare lamp locker, where the oilskins hung stiff with salt. I found a tinderbox and struck a light with shaking hands, and by its small yellow glow I saw what she had seen: the white teeth of the Kettle Reef, a cable off our bow, breaking and sighing like something asleep. The cat settled on her haunches and watched me without blinking, as though the whole business had been arranged between us and I was late.

We brought the Vane round by the stars that night, and in the morning Tallow fed her the last of the herring. Even now she won't let me near the bow when the fog comes in. I still have never given her a fish of my own.