Neo-traditional tattoo of a snarling grey wolf with a third eye and a gold-hilted dagger on an upper arm, with blue water swirls.

Wolf head and dagger on an upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A snarling grey wolf with bared fangs and an open, glowing third eye fills the upper arm, with a dagger running through its jaws and a gold-hilted dagger above the shoulder. The wolf is shaded in greys with bold black outlines, while blue water swirls, red blood and gold scrollwork add strong colour. The design is centred on the arm and the shoulder, with the subject cropped at the top edge of the frame.

Neo-trad Traditional Upper arm Shoulder Wolf Dagger Third eye Fangs Water Blood Scrollwork

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

Mags Harrow had bolted the lamp room door twice that night, and twice the thing on the step had shouldered it open again with the patience of a debt collector. It was grey as wet slate, with a wolf's ruff and a wolf's jaw, and a third eye open in the middle of its brow like a lamp that had not yet been lit. Where the sea ran off it, the water stayed blue for a while, curling round its legs in ribbons.

Keep reading

'You'll not come in,' she said, though it had never tried. It only ever stood at the foot of the rock stair and waited.

Her father had told her the tale the way he read out the tide tables, flat and without ornament. A wolf had swum out of the Solway the year the old light was built, carrying a dagger crosswise in its teeth. Whoever pulled the blade free would have the wolf's service for seven years, and whoever failed would be paid the way the sea always collects. Nobody had ever pulled it. The steel had rusted into the jaw, and the blood on it had gone brown as tea.

Night after night she climbed down with a lantern and a dish of salted herring, and night after night the wolf took the fish and left the dagger alone. On the seventh night Mags took the gold hilt in both hands, set her heel against the stone and pulled. The blade came away clean and bright as the day it was forged. The wolf lowered its head and, for the first time, spoke in her father's voice. 'Now keep the light.'