Black wolf silhouette tattoo standing on a rocky outline with one foreleg raised, placed on the upper chest near the shoulder.

Wolf silhouette on upper chest

Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a wolf-like canine stands on a thin, uneven line of rocks, with its head turned and one foreleg raised. The body is filled in with dense black ink and shows ragged, fur-like edges, with the ground drawn as simple open linework. The tattoo is black only on pale skin, against a plain background with a grey fabric edge at the top left.

Chest Wolf Silhouette Rock Animal

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

The ewes will not cross the ford until someone lifts a hand, and today that someone is you. Your father taught you the arrangement the spring before he died: raise an arm toward the ridge, and the grey wolf who keeps the high scree will raise its forefoot in answer, and the flock will know the path is clear. You have never stood near the animal. You have only seen its shape on the broken stones above Ketterwick, black against the white sky, watching the valley as though it were counting.

Keep reading

This morning the wolf does not answer. You hold your arm up until the shoulder burns and the ewes bunch and bleat behind you. Your younger brother Osric calls from the bank that the ridge-wolf is a tale for frightening children, that the thing is only a rock with a shadow on it. You tell him to wait. A herdsman who doubts the ridge will lose the whole flock to the river.

Then the wolf lifts its foreleg. It is slow and a little stiff, the way an old dog rises from a hearth. Its head turns toward you, and the ragged edges of its coat stir in a wind you cannot feel down here. You drop your arm. The ewes pour across the ford in a grey rush, and Osric shouts something the water swallows.

That night, when the flock is folded and the fire has sunk to coals, he asks whether you saw the wolf move or whether you only wanted it to. You tell him you saw what the old arrangement promised. In the morning you climb to the scree and find only bare stone and a row of small claw marks where something stood a long time, waiting to be asked.