Colour traditional-style tattoo of the state of Texas on a calf, showing a red sunset, mountains, water and a red and teal tent.

Texas outline with sunset and tent on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo of the outline of Texas filled with a red and orange sunset, a sun, dark mountains, teal water and a red and yellow tent. Bold black outlines and flat, solid fills give it a traditional look, with some grey shading along the lower edge of the land. The tattoo sits on a bare calf above a blue and grey sock, with a gravel path and dry leaves in the background.

Traditional Calf Texas State outline Sunset Sun Mountain Water Tent

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

Dell had the tent pegged before the sun slid behind the Chisos, which was lucky, because the mule had decided to quit for the day and was sitting in the gravel like a deacon at a wedding. The river below was running that teal colour it only took after storms upstream, the green Ruth at the store in Terlingua called dance-hall green. He sat on the sandbar with a tin cup of coffee gone cold and watched the sky turn red over the peaks, the sun dropping like a coin into a slot.

Keep reading

His brother's letter was folded in his shirt pocket, soft at the corners from being read on the back of a wagon. The ranch in Amarillo was sold. Come home and say your goodbyes, it said, and Dell had read that line so many times the ink had started to smudge. He didn't answer. Out past the firelight a coyote tried a few notes of a song it didn't know, and Dell lay back on his bedroll and dreamed he was walking the whole state with his boots, the borders no more than fence wire he could step over.

He woke to light coming through the tent flap, red and yellow and warm as a cookstove. The mule was already drinking from the river, and the water had gone to glass.

Dell unfolded the map on the sand and traced the river with his thumb. It ran off the bottom edge of the paper into somebody else's country, and he had always thought that was where the state ended. It wasn't. It was just where the water went. He folded the map to fit his pocket, struck the tent, and started south, the mule following with its ears turned back toward home.