Black ink elephant tattoo with patterned fill on an upper arm, beside a small outline elephant tattoo on a wrist, in blackwork and fine line styles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two matching elephant tattoos on arms

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Two arms are shown, each with a black elephant tattoo. The larger elephant on the upper arm has a dense patterned fill with floral-style detail and a solid eye, while the smaller elephant on the wrist is a simple thin outline with a lighter linework. Both are in black ink only, shown against plain skin with the second arm and hand entering from the right.

Blackwork Fine line Upper arm Forearm Elephant Pattern Floral Ornament Outline

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

Dear Tomasz,

Keep reading

The rain has got into the market again, running off the awnings in ropes so the stalls on Corn Row smell of wet cardboard and frying onions. Your mum says you're sleeping in a lorry depot now, so I'm sending this to the address she gave me. Burn it if it's rubbish.

Remember the man with the sewing tins by the fish hall? Mr Okafor, with the spectacles mended with fishing wire. He had a tray of wooden elephants that week, all painted by hand. The big one he kept under a cloth. When the rain started he lifted the cloth for me, and I saw it was carved from a single block of lime wood, every inch patterned with tiny marigolds and curling vines, a ribbon of dots along its back like the stitching on a good waistcoat. He said it took his daughter three winters to paint, and she had left for Manchester the spring after.

The little one sat on the tray with no pattern at all, just a thin ink line, its trunk curled up as if it were waving at someone across the road. I asked the price. He said it was already spoken for, then pressed it into my palm anyway. "For the one who comes back," he said, and winked. I didn't understand until I got home and found a scrap of cardboard in my coat pocket with your name on it in my own handwriting, from the year you were small enough to sit on the counter.

So it's yours, love. Come and collect it on Saturday. The rain will be here, the stall will be here, and the big one will still be under its cloth, waiting for you to look.

Love, Nan