Colourful swirl-patterned tattoo of a stylised animal head on the neck behind a woman's ear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swirling animal head behind the ear

Neck · Colour · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a woman's head and neck, with a tattoo of a stylised animal head built from flowing, curling linework behind her ear. The swirls fill the head in teal, purple, pink, green and yellow, while the muzzle and features are shaded in warm brown and orange. The tattoo sits against a plain grey background, with the ear and hairline framing it on the right.

Neck Animal head Swirl Ear Neck

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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

Now, sit close, because the old kingdom of Hollin Vale is only as wide as the mare's mane is long, and that mane is long enough to reach the sea if you know which curl to follow. Nobody has drawn a map of it since the flood took the bridges, so you must take my word for the shape of things, and my word is worn thin as a boot sole.

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The mare was called Ashvane. Her coat was the brown of bread crust left too long by the fire, but the mane was the marvel. It ran through every colour the dyers of Ossery ever mixed: teal, plum, sour pink, pond green, and a yellow like a wasp's back. Every curl was a road. A farmer lost in fog had only to hold the nearest twist of colour, and it would walk him home to his own door.

Then came the winter the Lord of Marrow counted his sheep and found none of them his. He sent Tobin Crane, the king's cooper, up the hill with shears the length of his arm. Tobin reached for the teal curl first, and found himself at the bottom of the hill by supper, though he had been climbing all day. He tried the purple, then the pink, and each one dropped him back at the frozen well where he had started. By the third week he sat on the mare's brown ear and wept into his beard.

It was his granddaughter who ended it, a girl of six who had never been told which roads were forbidden. She took hold of the yellow curl, the one like a wasp's back, and walked straight up into the mane. Tobin's shears were found the next morning, hung neatly on the ear, and the mane was still in one piece. The valley says the roads are still there for anyone brave enough to hold one, though the girl never came down, and I have never been brave enough to find out.