Colour tattoo of a black stag beetle with yellow wings and a faceted green gem on the back of a hand, in a neo-traditional style.

Stag beetle with green gem on the hand

Neo-trad · Hand · Colour · Photo

A large stag beetle with a glossy black body and yellow wing cases sits over a faceted green gemstone ringed with small purple beads. Bold dark outlines and shaded highlights give the beetle a rounded, dimensional look, while the gem uses bright green tones. Partial green leaves and a red flower appear at the top of the frame, and the word LADY is lettered across the fingers below.

Neo-trad Realism Hand Beetle Gemstone Bead Leaves Flower Lettering

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

Mr Pell never let me touch the emeralds, so when the beetle came in on a Tuesday wrapped in brown tissue, I did what any sixteen-year-old would do and asked him why. He held it up to the shop window on Market Row and turned it so the light ran over the black shell like oil on a puddle. 'Stag beetle,' he said. 'Real gold on the wing cases, and that green is no paste.'

Keep reading

Mrs Vane had carried it in under her coat, the way people carry things they would rather not be seen selling. Her late husband had bought it in Lisbon before the war from a man with one good eye, and it had sat in a drawer under the wedding photographs ever since. Mr Pell rubbed the faceted stone with a chamois and counted the purple beads ringing its rim. Eleven of them, each one a cold little pearl. 'Someone meant this for a lady,' he said.

Mrs Vane wanted forty pounds. Mr Pell offered twelve and folded his hands the way he did when he was enjoying himself. Then the bell over the door rang and her daughter Frances came in, wearing a green coat the same shade as the gem, asking for her mother. She saw the beetle on the counter and went very still. 'That was Dad's,' she said. 'He always said it looked like something that had flown out of a jeweller's window.'

I wrapped it back in its tissue myself and passed it across the counter. Frances paid the full forty without a word, and Mr Pell pretended not to notice. Walking home past the church, I kept my hands in my pockets and thought of the wings folded beneath that black shell, all that gold kept hidden until the moment it was needed. The lamps came on along Market Row, and every puddle I stepped over held a small green light.