Pencil drawing of a wolf head split down the middle, realistic shading on the left and ornate black ink pattern on the right, shown as a tattoo design.

Split wolf head design

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A wolf's head faces forward, with its left half drawn in realistic pencil shading and its right half filled with dense black ink linework in an ornamental pattern of swirls, dots and floral shapes. The soft grey shading on the fur contrasts with the crisp, high-contrast patterning on the other side. The drawing sits centred on a plain off-white background.

Realism Dotwork Wolf Animal Pattern Mandala Floral

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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 generator coughs twice and dies, and the whole field at Lammas goes black except for the paraffin lamp over Aunt Dorrie's easel. 'Hold it still, Ivo, and stop looking at the Waltzer. Those lads will wait.' You hold it still. Her brush is already moving across the sheet pinned to the board, a wolf's head she has been drawing since Wakefield, since before the tent had a canvas roof.

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Left side she does in pencil, slow and grey, the fur feathering out over the cheek like breath on cold glass. The eye on that side is almost kind. Right side is ink, and that is where she lets the wolf go wild: rings and whorls, dots sprinkled like seed, little five-petalled flowers she learned to draw from a carpet seller in Hull who swore the pattern held a prayer. Every ride they've worked gets a mark in there somewhere, a tiny hook, a star, a scrap of bunting.

A woman in a green mac leans into the lamplight and asks which half is the real wolf. Dorrie doesn't look up. 'The grey side is what anyone can see. The black side is what it does when nobody's looking.' She taps the paper near the ear, where the whorls tighten into a knot of lines you have never noticed before. Your name is in there, small as a grain of rice, worked into the pattern the night you ran off from the dodgems and came back soaked. 'I put you where the wolf keeps its secrets,' she says.

The woman pays in coppers and walks off toward the lights. Dorrie signs the corner, blows gently on the ink, and somewhere behind the caravans the generator catches. The bulbs flicker on along the Waltzer, and for a moment the wolf's grey eye and its inked one both catch the same light, and you cannot tell which of them is watching you.