Black and grey realism style stag head tattoo with large antlers across the back of a hand and along the middle finger, with a small block letter I on another finger.

Stag head tattoo on the back of a hand

Realism · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A stag head with branching antlers is tattooed across the back of the hand and extends onto the middle finger. The linework is bold and the face, ears and muzzle are built up with fine grey shading that gives a three-dimensional effect. The image is in black and grey, with the hand photographed against a white paper surface.

Realism Hand Stag Deer Antler Animal Letter

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 stag came down to the allotments the week the frost took the runner beans, and Mrs Pryce swore it looked at her the way the vicar looks at a late hymn. Nobody in Hollin Cross had seen one that close since my grandfather's day. He used to tell it at the Crown, how the beast would stand at the wood's edge with its antlers held out like a rack of old coat hooks, and how you could read the whole forest in the grey of its face if you were patient enough to wait.

Keep reading

I went up at dusk with his penknife and a block of lime wood under my arm, meaning to carve the thing before it moved on. The bracken was black with wet. I sat with my back against the stile and waited, and the wood went quiet the way it does when something large is deciding whether to trust you. When the stag finally stepped out, its face was soft grey shading, dark about the eyes and pale at the muzzle where its breath kept misting. Its ears turned one way, then the other, listening for the village dogs, and I forgot the lime wood entirely.

It did not run. It lowered its head to the hedge, pulled a mouthful of holly and stood chewing as though we had an arrangement. Then it turned and went back between the oaks, slow as a man leaving church, and the dark closed behind it. In the morning I found a single shed antler at the stile, pale and heavier than it had any right to be. I carried it home under my coat. I never did carve the lime wood. Mrs Pryce still says the stag was wiser than either of us, and I have stopped arguing with her.