Black ink flash drawing of a tiger head with hanging feathers, crystals, beads and a heart beneath, a tattoo design on paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tiger head with dreamcatcher design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A tiger head faces forward, drawn with bold black ink fills for the stripes and fine linework for the eyes, nose and whiskers. Below the head, a dreamcatcher-style arrangement of beaded chains hangs with a central heart, two crystal shapes, and three ornate feathers with detailed inner patterns. The drawing is centred on plain cream paper, with a ruler and black pens at the edge of the frame.

Blackwork Fine line Tiger Dreamcatcher Feather Crystal Heart Bead Chain

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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

Hold still, our Ellen, and let me get this knot right, because a dream strung badly slips off the hoop and falls straight through the sill onto whoever's sleeping underneath. Your gran told me that, and her gran told her, and I've never once tested it. Now mind the feathers. Three of them, from the grey jay that nested in the yew behind the chapel, and I'll not hear a word about the mill pigeons.

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The tiger came down from the fair on the Keighley road the autumn the big top blew over. Nobody had shut its cage, or nobody owned up to it, and it walked into the valley with the mist as if it had been asked. Old Harrow the carter swore it stopped at every gate to look at the sheep and went on without touching one. It crossed the beck on the stepping stones and lay down outside the Whitcliffe kitchen door, and it kept watch there all night, its eyes as green as the lamp in the window.

Mrs Pickles fed it the crusts from the bread bin and, being a sensible woman, asked it nothing. At first light the tiger rose, shook its head so the stripes rippled like washing on a line, and climbed the hill to the old quarry. Where it had lain, the frost had melted into the shape of a heart, and on the step sat a single crystal, clear as a dropped tear, that nobody could explain. Mrs Pickles kept it on the windowsill for forty years.

So there you are. Hang the finished hoop above the bed, and when the wind comes off the moor you'll hear the beads knock together like teeth. That's the tiger, keeping an eye on which dreams it lets through. Now pass me those scissors before you take your thumb off, and mind the heart. It's the only part I ever made myself.