Colour tattoo of an animated-style woman with long hair, a wolf and autumn maple leaves, sitting on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman, wolf and maple leaves on a leg

Thigh · Colour · Photo

A large colour tattoo shows a woman in profile gazing upwards, with long dark hair swept back into a dark shape resembling a bird. Below her, a wolf with closed eyes is set among red, orange and yellow maple leaves. The soft, painterly shading and bright palette sit against the pale skin of the leg.

Thigh Woman Wolf Maple leaves Autumn leaves Raven Portrait Animal Hair

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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

Hush now, and move closer to the fire, because the leaves are coming down and the wind is looking for someone to carry. My grandmother's grandmother knew a girl at the ford called Ansa, who could never sit still when the maples turned. She ran the banks with her hair loose, and the wind liked it so much that it tangled in every strand and would not let go.

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One October the wind grew greedy. It pulled Ansa's hair up off her shoulders and carried it out over the water, and the dark mass of it lifted and folded itself into the shape of a raven, all wing and no body, and flew off toward the hills. Ansa stood on the stones with her arms empty and called after it. The only answer came from the grey wolf who lived in the alder thicket. He came down to the water with his eyes shut, as wolves do when they are listening rather than looking.

Her mother said the wolf had made a bargain with the wind, and the price was one red leaf for every year he had been alive. So Ansa gathered the maples, one leaf for each season she had walked that ford, and laid them at the wolf's feet. He lowered his head onto them and slept, and the leaves folded around him like a blanket of fire.

Every autumn since, the raven comes back to the ford at dusk and drops a single hair onto the water. Count the leaves that have fallen by morning, and you will know how many years the wolf has left to dream. And if the wind is quiet, go down to the stones and call Ansa's name. Do not be surprised when the bird answers.