Black tribal-style wolf head design in solid black ink on white, with three small stars trailing below it.

Tribal wolf head with three stars

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A bold tribal-style design showing a wolf's head in profile, facing left, with sharp pointed ears and flowing, flame-like black shapes forming the mane and neck. Three small five-pointed stars trail diagonally down and to the right beneath the head. The design is rendered in solid black linework and fills with no shading or grey tones, set against a plain white background.

Blackwork Wolf Star Tribal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marta had been told the wolf was too fierce for a shop front, but the landlord of the Bell & Anchor wanted something that would frighten the bailiffs, so she worked from a chalk drawing traced onto the back of a tide table. Nobody in Hull had seen a wolf on Scale Lane since the Victorians, yet at half past eleven on a wet Tuesday the street smelt of diesel and gull, and the only light came from the chippy opposite.

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She painted with a sable brush and a tin of enamel black bought from a man who sold ship paint by the litre. The ears went first, two sharp blades, then the mane, which she pulled into long flames down the shutter until the sheet metal ran cold under her palm. The three stars she left until last, because the landlord's daughter had asked for them, and because they were the only part of the job she could not measure with a rule.

Around one o'clock a boy on a bicycle stopped to watch. He asked why the wolf was looking left, away from the sea, and Marta said she had heard wolves always run towards the lights that are going out. He laughed, then went quiet, and when she finished he pressed the lowest star with one wet finger to see whether it would smear.

It did not. By morning the paint had dried hard enough that the rain beaded on it, rolled off the tail, followed the three stars down the shutter and into the gutter that ran towards the river.