Pencil and ink drawing of a unicorn head framed by a rose and leafy foliage, in a neo-traditional style, shown as a tattoo design rather than on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Unicorn and rose design drawing

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A drawn tattoo design showing a unicorn head in profile, with flowing mane, a spiral horn and a large rose at the top left. Foliage, leaves and small berry clusters trail down the left side, with a string of beads at the lower edge. The bold black outlines are paired with soft grey pencil shading on the horse's face and mane, and the design is set on a pale paper background.

Neo-trad Unicorn Horse Rose Leaves Foliage Berry Bead Mane Horn

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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

Old Tobias said a figurehead should look at the sea the way a widow looks at a door, so he turned the mare's head hard to starboard and let her eyes half close against the spray. I was twelve, sweeping shavings from under his bench, when the brig Marguerite came up the estuary with orders for a unicorn. The owner wanted something that would not sink, he said, and Tobias laughed until he coughed.

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He would not carve the horn. He said a spiral took a steadiness he had spent on other things, so he set the blank in my hands with a rasp and turned the lamp up. For three nights I worked the twist while the gulls argued on the slipway. Mrs Pell from the chandlery brought a rose cut from her garden and pinned it to the bow so we could copy the petals, and she left a string of jet beads on the bench, saying every good keel wanted something to pull it home.

The Marguerite sailed on the morning tide with the mare gleaming white at her prow. In November a north-easterly drove her onto the sandbanks off the point. Nobody drowned, but the brig broke up, and the figurehead came ashore in pieces along three miles of shingle. I walked the tideline for a week gathering them, and the only piece I could not find was the horn, until a fisherman's boy brought it to my door wrapped in wrack.

I still keep it on the wall above my bench. Each spring, when the first boats go out, I thread Mrs Pell's jet beads over its tip and leave them there until the nets come in. Tobias never asked whether I had got the spiral right. He only looked at it and nodded, the way you nod at a boat that has come home.