Black and grey tattoo of stacked animal heads, including what appear to be an owl and a deer skull with antlers, on the front of a thigh in a black and white photo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stacked animal figures on a thigh

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical stack of animal forms runs down the thigh, with a cat-like head at the top, an owl-like face in the middle and a skull with antler-like branches at the base. The linework is fine and the shading is soft and detailed, giving the forms depth against the skin. The photo is black and white, taken from above with two bare legs and a patterned fabric draped across the lower edge of the frame.

Thigh Animal Skull Antler Owl Cat Deer

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 lift at Ashby Cross made the same sigh every night at ten past three, like someone lowering themselves into a bad chair, and I had learned to wait for it before pushing the linen trolley through. A night porter at a cottage hospital knows everything that moves after midnight, and most of it is cats. Mrs Tolland's tabby had come in through the loading bay in October with a torn ear, and Gordon from pharmacy swore it had been living in the sluice room ever since, eating the crusts off the staff sandwiches.

Keep reading

The owl arrived in February. It sat on the ledge outside ward four, where the fire escape doubles as a gutter, and Sister Okafor said it was only a tawny sheltering from the wind. I knew better. Owls do not turn their heads to follow the green lines on a monitor the way that one did, patient and unimpressed, as if it were doing the observations itself and finding the numbers wanting.

The last stop on my round was the old chapel store at the end of the east corridor, where Dorothy from the kitchens had propped a deer's skull on the windowsill. She had found it on the verge of the moor road and carried it in wrapped in a tea towel, saying it would bring luck to whoever worked nights. The antlers were bleached and forked like bare branches, and I used to tell myself I only checked the store because of the damp.

On the morning I handed in my keys, the ledge was empty except for one grey feather. The sluice room was quiet. In the chapel store the skull still sat where Dorothy had left it, but the branches had caught the first light through the glass, and I could have sworn the tips had gone a little darker, as if they had been out in the rain all night and had come back to watch the ward.