Black and grey tattoo of a stag's head with antlers in front of a keyhole, a crown and radiating rays, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stag and keyhole on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A stag's head with full antlers sits below a circular keyhole emblem topped with a crown and fine radiating rays. The stag's fur and face are shaded with soft grey gradients, while the emblem and rays use crisp linework and stippled detail. The image is a close, straight-on photo of the forearm against a plain green background, with the design filling most of the frame.

Forearm Stag Deer Antler Keyhole Crown Sunburst Ray

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the lift, it has opinions. I'm telling this the way my grandmother told it to me on the fourteenth floor of Harcourt House, where the wind came up the stairwell like it paid rent. There was a stag lived up there, a big old thing with a rack like a coat stand, and every evening at dusk he climbed the service stairs because the caretaker, Mr Dunmore, always left the roof door propped with a brick.

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That door had a keyhole the size of a thumb, and no key had ever been cut to fit it. Dunmore kept the only one on a string round his neck, and he died in the spring, so nobody knew where it had gone. The stag didn't need a key. He put his nose to the keyhole and breathed, and the lock sighed and gave way, the way old locks do when they've been waiting for someone to ask nicely.

On the roof the whole city lay out under a sunburst of lamps, rays spilling off every estate as if someone had struck a match beneath the crown of London. Kids on the walkway swore they could see him standing against the sky with the light caught in his antlers. My grandmother said he wasn't hunting anything. He was only looking for the key, the way everyone looks for something they once had and set down somewhere safe.

So if you're ever up on the fourteenth and the roof door's open, don't go through it. And if you do, bring something small and metal and leave it on the ledge for him. That's the toll. Now the lift's working again, so off you go, and mind the step at the bottom. It's been waiting for someone to trip on it since 1968.