Black and grey outline tattoo of a smiling cartoon troll doll with a tuft of hair on an upper arm, with the hair above the head appearing to be real body hair.

Troll doll tattoo on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A simple cartoon troll figure with a smiling face, pointed ears and outstretched arms is drawn in a single dark grey outline on the upper arm. Light grey shading sits inside the head and body, and the tuft of tall hair above the head appears to be real body hair rather than ink. The figure is centred on a plain skin background with a sleeve edge visible on the right.

Upper arm Cartoon Figure Hair

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

The troll washed up on the rocks below Gannet Point the morning after the big blow, wedged between a lobster pot and a sodden copy of the shipping forecast. Nobody on the island had lost a troll, so I put him on the windowsill of the lamp room to dry out, where he sat grinning at the Irish Sea for a week as if he had paid for the view.

Keep reading

His hair was the trouble. It stood up in a tall, salt-stiff tuft that grew a finger's width every night, and by Thursday it was brushing the lens housing. Mrs Pryce from the mainland ferry said it was algae. The gulls said nothing, which was worse, because they kept landing on the sill to stare at him the way they stare at a chip shop bag.

On the Saturday the fog came in thick as porridge, and the Dunmore trawler called up on the radio asking where the light had gone. I climbed the stairs to find the lamp dark, the clockwork stalled, and the troll sitting proud in front of the mechanism with his arms out, as though he had held the whole thing up single-handed. His hair was wound through the gears. I did not ask how.

I unpicked him with a pair of brass tweezers and a great deal of swearing, gave the trawler a clear bearing, and set him back on the sill. He smiled at me, and I decided that was the end of it. The following night the tuft had grown another inch, and the light burned true until dawn, which is more than I can say for the island's cats.