Black tribal-style wolf design with blue flame trails and a swirl at its centre, drawn on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal wolf with blue flames

Blackwork · Mixed · Flash

A leaping wolf-like creature drawn in bold solid black tribal shapes, with flowing curls and spikes along its back and tail. Blue flames stream from the head and forelegs, and a blue gradient with a spiral motif sits at the centre of the body. The design is isolated on a white background with the figure filling most of the frame.

Blackwork Wolf Flame Swirl Creature Tribal

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

Sit closer, the lorries are all asleep and the barrier has finally stopped its clanging. You want the wolf that ran at the checkpoint with his tail on fire? Mind, I was not there. My grandmother was, and she never told it the same way twice, so you will get the version I trust, which is the one with the least lying in it.

Keep reading

The gate at Hrasno stood where the road met the river, and that November the guards there had orders to stop anything that moved after dark. The wolf came down off the hill in the middle of a snowstorm, black as a cut in the night, with blue flame pouring from his head and his forelegs as though someone had lit the wind. He did not hurry. Sergeant Vask stepped out with his lamp and asked for papers, and the wolf looked at him a long while, then turned slowly so the spiral in his chest could be seen, a blue whorl turning round and round like water going down a drain.

Vask lifted his rifle. The wolf simply leapt the barrier in one long arc, and the flames on his tail licked the cabin without burning a single sheet of paper inside it. Every stamp in the register went blank, and every name in the book ran like river water. My grandmother swore the sergeant wept, though he never admitted it, because a border is only a line drawn on paper, and the wolf had walked straight through the paper.

When the snow cleared, the barrier was up and the road was empty. On the sergeant's desk lay a single page, and across the top, in blue ink that would not dry, were the words PASS FREELY, with a paw print beneath them. He kept it in his pocket until the day he died, and I have it here, if you would like to see it, though I warn you the ink is still wet.