Small realistic black and grey tattoo of a tiger's head on the inner wrist and forearm, with a woven bracelet visible at the bottom left.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tiger head on the inner wrist

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small tiger's head faces the viewer, with dark stripes on the forehead and cheeks, pale eyes and whiskers. The fine shading builds up soft grey tones across the fur, and the design sits centrally on the inner wrist against a light wooden floor. A woven bracelet and a hand with gold nail polish appear at the edges of the frame.

Realism Forearm Tiger Animal Big cat

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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 stamp hits the form twice before you look up, because the hut has no clock and the lorry from Sorvine is three hours late. On the counter sits the thing that has kept you awake: a carved tiger's head, the size of a fist, wrapped in a pillowcase printed with faded roses. Its stripes were cut with a hot needle, fine as pencil hatching, and its eyes are two chips of amber glass. The manifest calls it decorative fitting, no declared value.

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Nadia Lenko, who says she is the driver's cousin and not the driver, leans over the sill and asks whether it is ready to go. You tell her the customs office in Sorvine has not yet decided what a tiger is. She laughs, then stops, because the wind has come up off the reservoir and the flag on the pole is slapping like a dropped book. Somewhere behind the barrier a dog barks once and gives up.

You ask her where the carving was made. She says her grandfather cut it from a branch that came down in the storm the year the bridge went, and that he always said a tiger keeps its face turned toward wherever it has been. You do not write that on the form. You write tiger, unmarked, and beneath it, in smaller letters, let through.

When the barrier lifts she takes the pillowcase back without unfolding it. Through the grimy window you watch her car climb the grey road, and the thin sun slides across the wet tarmac until the carved head is only a dark shape turning at the bend, looking back the way it came.