Black and white line drawing of two mirrored winged horses rearing above an intertwined scaled serpent, framed by fine feather-like filigree, suitable as a tattoo flash design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Symmetrical winged horses and serpent design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical design of two rearing winged horses whose bodies become scaled fish-like tails, with a dark serpent coiled beneath them. The linework is fine and precise, with stippled dotwork shading on the scales, wings and serpent body. The composition is monochrome on a white background, with feathery filigree radiating outward on both sides.

Fine line Dotwork Horse Serpent Fish scale Feather Symmetry

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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

The wings had been Mr Pell's idea, and by the third week of October nobody in the Harrowgate Brothers Circus could remember why they had agreed to them. Two grey mares stood in the sawdust under the one working lamp while Pell wired the pinions to their saddles. The paint had been bright in summer, when the tent still sold out in Leeds and Bradford. Now it flaked onto the straw like scales, and the feathers sagged at the tips where the damp got in.

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Ottoline had ridden the left-hand mare since she was eleven. She knew the mares only reared in perfect step if they could see each other's shoulders, and the wings blocked that view entirely. So they rehearsed without them, rising together in a mirrored curve while the cold came up through the boards. Between runs she sat on an upturned bucket and counted the empty seats in the stalls, which was quicker than counting the takings.

Clearing the old sea-lion tank that afternoon, she found a canvas rolled beneath the drain grate. Someone had painted a serpent on it years ago, coiled in a black loop with its head turned back toward its tail. The scales had been stippled with a sable brush so fine that she had to hold it to the lamp to see the dots. It was the only thing in the wagon that nobody had asked to sell.

She carried it up to the ring and laid it flat between the mares' hooves. Pell wanted to know what good it was. Ottoline did not answer. She cut the wire from the left wing, dipped the sable in the last of the silver paint, and began copying the dots onto the mare's shoulder, where the two shadows would meet when the horses rose.