Black and grey line drawing of a barn owl with ornate dotwork detail, surrounded by leaves, flowers and an arrow, shown as an unapplied tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Barn owl with botanical ornament design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pencil and ink drawing of a barn owl perched in front view with its head turned, its heart-shaped face finely stippled and its wings patterned with scalloped lines and dots. Leaves, flowers and a feathered arrow frame the lower half, and a decorative arch sits above the head. The shading is in greys with faint pink and purple wash in the background and on a few petals.

Dotwork Botanical Owl Barn owl Feather Flower Leaves Arrow Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Rain had been drumming on the canvas since seven, and by eleven my pitch smelled of wet cardboard and the lavender I sold in tight bunches for a pound. Nobody stops in weather like that. Which is why I noticed the old man under the dripping awning opposite, turning a sheet of drawing paper over and over as if it might dry faster that way.

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He'd bought a bunch of dried yarrow from me in the spring, and he came back now with a folder under his coat and a face like someone who had lost an argument with the sky. "My daughter drew this," he said, and held it up. A barn owl, turned in profile, its heart-shaped face stippled grey, its wings laid out in scalloped rows like the border of an old hymn book. Leaves and flowers curled around its feet, and across the bottom a feathered arrow ran through the frame like a pencil through a score.

"She's gone to Leeds," he said. "Took the good pens." I asked whether he wanted it framed. He shook his head. He wanted to know if the owl was looking at him or past him, and I told him past, because owls on paper always look past you, at something you cannot see.

He left the drawing with me to keep dry under my table. At closing I found it still there, the pink wash on the petals bleeding a little where the rain had reached the edge. I pinned it to the tent pole, facing out, so anyone passing would see the owl looking straight down the empty road where the old man had gone.