Watercolour-style tattoo of a deer with antlers among red, orange and green flower washes, placed on the ribs.

Watercolour deer tattoo on the ribs

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A deer with large antlers stands in profile, drawn in loose black linework with scattered dots. Soft red, orange, pink and green washes of colour form flowers and foliage around the animal, with thin black stems trailing below. The composition spans the side of the torso, with the deer at the top and the stems fading toward the lower edge.

Ribs Deer Antler Flower Leaves Stem Dot

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

You notice the deer first from the fourth-floor walkway, where the washing lines sag under the rain. It stands between the planters the Alder Court residents filled with sweet peas last summer, and nobody has watered them since the lift broke. Its antlers catch the sodium light and seem to branch straight into the sky above the car park.

Keep reading

Mrs Okonedo from flat 41 says it came up the service stairs at dusk, leaving prints on the wet lino. You don't believe her until you see the spatters of mud along its flank, as if someone has flicked a loaded brush. It doesn't run when you open your door. It looks at you the way the council man never did, then turns back towards the stairwell, stepping over cracked paving where red and orange weeds have pushed through.

You follow it down eleven floors, past the graffiti and the overturned bins, out into the car park where grass has grown up through the tarmac. Every stalk it brushes blooms for a moment, petals bright as paint on damp paper, then fades to a thin black line. By the time it reaches the kerb you have stopped counting the flowers.

At the edge of the estate it turns once and waits. You fetch the watering can from your balcony, the one with the rusted spout, and fill it at the outside tap. When you look up the deer is gone, but the planters along the walkway are full of sweet peas, and their stems trail down the render in long black lines, like someone has signed their name.