Black and grey tattoo of a howling wolf on the upper arm, its head filled with stars and a moon above a pine forest and a tent, in blackwork and dotwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Wolf howling over a pine forest on an upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A howling wolf's head and neck form the top of the design, with a night sky of dots and a crescent moon inside its outline. Below, a mountain ridge, a row of pine trees and a small tent sit within the wolf's lower body, which fades into a flowing tail. The design uses solid black fills, fine stippling and open grey shading on pale skin, with a simple composition against a dark t-shirt sleeve.

Blackwork Dotwork Upper arm Wolf Moon Star Pine tree Forest Tent Mountain Night sky

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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

Tuesday, 14 October. The last up train left Glenaird at twenty to nine and the platform has been mine since. Mr Corrie says there is nothing to log at a halt with no ticket office, only the lamp and the tally book, but he has never sat out here after dark. Tonight the sky over the ridge was so thick with stars I could have read the timetable by it, and a thin moon hung just above the pines as if someone had placed it there on purpose.

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At half ten something started up on the far side of the line. Not a farm dog. I have heard the Hallows dogs all summer and this was lower and longer, climbing at the end like a question. The crossing bell rang once on its own, which it does in the wind, and then the call came again, and I could swear the note ran down the rails towards the lamp.

Yesterday a man with a rolled tent strapped to his rucksack got off the eleven fifteen and asked how far it was to the bothy. I told him three miles through the trees and that he should be off the high path before the light went. He thanked me and walked up past the last fence post. I have not seen him come down. Ewan at the signal box says the wolves came back to the glen two winters ago and nobody believes him, and I have started to believe him.

I took the lamp to the end of the platform and held it up. Beyond the fence, a pale shape sat in the bracken, watching the light without any fear in it. It turned its head to the moon and opened its mouth. I wrote down the time, eleven minutes past ten, and then, for the first time in all my years on this line, I wrote that I was not afraid.