Pen and ink drawing of a stag with antlers decorated in red roses and blossoms, shown as a tattoo design on a cream parchment background.

Stag with rose-covered antlers

Mixed · Flash

A front-facing stag's head and neck are drawn in fine black linework with hatched shading on the face and neck. Its branching antlers sprout red roses and blossom sprays, which contrast with the grey ink against a pale, mottled cream background.

Stag Deer Antler Rose Blossom Branches

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

Dear Nell, we pitched on the common at Hadley last night, and I have to tell you about the gate, because nobody here will talk about it properly. Mr Fenwick's roundabout has a carved stag over the entrance, the one with the hatched neck your father always admired, and this morning someone had hung branches over its antlers. Not real branches. They were wild rose, cut from the hedge by the lane, the red ones, and they had been wired on so neatly you'd think a florist had done it.

Keep reading

Mr Fenwick took one look and went grey. He said the stag was carved by a man called Ostler, who ran a fair out of Kettering and died owing everyone money, and that every spring the stag grows a flower where it was last loved. I laughed at him. Then I watched the ticket girl, Pip, tuck a rose behind her ear without thinking, and she did not laugh at all.

We struck camp by noon. When I looked back from the lorry the stag was still standing above the empty field, and the roses had come out on the very tips of its antlers while nobody was watching. The wire was gone. I have decided not to mention it to Mr Fenwick again.

Write back soon, and tell Mum I am eating properly. Your loving sister, Hettie.