Neo-trad colour tattoo on an upper arm showing a half white faceless mask with red marks beside a half grey wolf with yellow eyes and red trim.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Split white mask and wolf on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo splits into two halves: on the left, a smooth white mask with red marks and black dots, and on the right, a grey wolf-like face with yellow-ringed eyes and red detailing. It has bold black outlines with smooth fills and some soft shading on the fur. Red, yellow and orange sit against the grey and white, and the design fills the frame against a blurred green and grey striped top.

Neo-trad Upper arm Mask Wolf Spirit Animal Eye

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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

The fog had sat on Corran Point for three nights when the lamp began to dim without anyone touching it. You climb the iron stairs with the can of paraffin under one arm and find a figure at the gallery rail, pale as bleached shell, its face a smooth white oval with two red strokes above and a single black dot below, as though someone had drawn a face in a hurry and then given up. It does not turn. It holds an empty brass cup out over the sea.

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Below, on the path where the gorse meets the rock, a grey wolf has come up out of the mist. Its eyes are ringed in amber, and they are fixed on the white figure, not on you. Your gran used to say the lighthouse belonged to whoever kept it lit, and that you should never light a lamp for something without a face to thank you with. You had thought that was a story for bairns.

You fill the reservoir anyway. The wick catches with a soft pop and the beam swings out across the water, and the mask tilts toward it the way a plant tilts toward a window. The cup fills with light and the figure drinks it, slowly, until the gallery is only warm air and the smell of oil. The wolf lies down at the foot of the tower and sleeps with its nose on the step.

That was thirty years ago. The boats came home on time that winter and every winter after, and the old keeper's cottage still has a white mask nailed above the door, two red strokes and a dot, and a wolf's paw print pressed into the mortar of the step.