Traditional style tattoo of an animal head with bared fangs and red tongue on the upper arm, with green leaves at the top edge.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional animal head on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A bold animal head, possibly a boar or wolf, fills the upper arm with heavy black outlines, dense black fur-like shading and red accents on the tongue, ears and snout. Yellow and green eyes add colour to the otherwise dark design. Green leaves cross the top right of the frame, and a brick wall and parking sign sit in the background.

Traditional Upper arm Animal head Wolf Fangs Tongue Eye Leaves

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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

Mind the step, love, the boards go soft where the rain gets under the canvas. Sit by the stove and I'll tell you about the wolf. Pemberton's Travelling Show had three elephants once, and a lion that could be coaxed into a sort of dance for a ham bone, but by the spring I'm talking about, the only thing left worth a penny at the gate was the wolf. Her name was Vesper. She was black as a coal scuttle from ruff to tail, and her eyes were the green and amber of old pub glass held up to a lamp.

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Every night Mr Pemberton walked her out on a chain of brass links, and every night the crowd went quiet, because she had a way of lifting her lip to show her fangs, and her red tongue came out like a fresh cut. The children screamed for it. The tax man stopped coming to the gate. Pemberton's debts grew teeth of their own, and they bit harder than Vesper ever did.

The night the bailiffs came, Vesper did not growl. She walked to the back flap, looked out at the dark field, then at the old ringmaster, and sat down in the straw as though she had decided something. He unhooked the chain himself, with hands that shook so badly he dropped the clasp twice. Nobody saw her go. In the morning there were paw prints the size of dinner plates in the mud past the caravans, heading east towards the hills.

Pemberton never bought another wolf. He kept the faded poster, though, and he'd tell anyone who'd listen that on wet nights, if you stand where the sawdust used to be and keep very still, you'll hear a soft crunch of gravel out past the gate, and then a low sound that is almost a laugh. Mind, he was a liar in most things. In that he was a fair one.