Colourful neo-traditional tattoo of a unicorn head with a crystal horn, lotus flowers and a red mandala on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Unicorn and mandala on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A unicorn head with a jewelled horn and gem pendant dominates the design, with purple mane strands and realistic shading on the face. Red and orange lotus flowers and a large red mandala sit behind and around it, and a black and grey lace mandala anchors the bottom of the piece. Bold colour ink dominates, with dark outlines and soft shading giving depth to the animal's features.

Neo-trad Botanical Thigh Unicorn Horse Crystal Gem Mandala Lotus Flower Lace

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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

The mainmast was already stepped when the owner came down to the carver's shed in Deptford and asked for something that would not drown. You wiped your gouges on your apron and said a unicorn would do it, because nobody argues with a unicorn. He laughed, then paid you in advance for two months of lamp oil and a silver half crown, which you spent on gold leaf before the ship had left the river.

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By the Cape the carving was finished. You had given her a horn of brass plated over with green glass cut to look like emeralds, and a bridle of beads that clacked whenever the bow dipped. The mane you painted in plum and bruised violet, the colour of the bosun's shins after the squall off Madeira. Behind the head you set a great red sun wheel, its rings spreading out like ripples on a pond, and at the base of the neck a fan of lotus blooms, the only flowers you had seen since Lisbon. The men called her Mistress. Nobody called her a horse.

Off the Cape of Good Hope the cook's boy, Tam, climbed out on the bowsprit to sit under her chin and sing to the water. You went after him with a rope and found him stroking the carved cheek as if it might blink. "She's been looking at the sea for a month," he said. "Doesn't she want to get closer?"

You told him figureheads never want anything. Then you noticed the paint had lifted at the jaw, a crescent of raw wood showing where the spray had got in. You fetched your little knife and a pot of ochre, and you began to mend her, one stroke at a time, while the ship groaned forward into the long grey swell.