Traditional style colour tattoo of a small brown bird perched on a red branch with pink flowers, green leaves and a paintbrush, on a calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird, flowers and paintbrush on a leg

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

A small songbird with a cream breast, brown wing and a pale stripe above its eye perches on a red branch. Pink blossoms and dark green leaves surround it, and a red paintbrush with a yellow ferrule and red paint drips at the lower end. Bold black outlines and flat, saturated colour fill the design against pale skin.

Traditional Calf Bird Flower Blossom Leaves Branch Paintbrush

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Calder House had been broken since Easter, so I carried the tins up fourteen flights with my brushes knocking against my hip. Mr Dunmore wanted the stairwell done before the council inspection, and the landing walls were the colour of weak tea. The man at the paint shop swore his Chalk Dust would cover anything, and I was too tired to argue with him.

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The wren was already there when I reached the fourteenth floor, perched on the rail of the open walkway as if it had booked the spot. A small brown thing with a cocked tail and a pale stripe over its eye, like someone had drawn it with a fine nib. Every time I dipped my brush it hopped a little nearer, and by the third morning it was pecking at the crumbs from my sandwich on the window ledge.

On the Thursday a woman from flat 41 came up to complain about the smell of the solvent and stayed to watch me. She said her dad had painted the whole block in 1974 and never once let a drip reach the floor. Then she told me the wren had a nest in the gap behind the downpipe, four eggs, and would I mind leaving the outside wall alone until they hatched. I said I'd only do the inside. She nodded as if she'd expected nothing else.

By Friday the landing was finished, bar one patch by the window where I'd left my old red brush propped on the sill. The paint had dried into the bristles. I meant to bin it, but when I came back on Monday the bird was sitting on the handle, bold as anything, and a single bead of red was running down the yellow ferrule. I didn't have the heart to wipe it away.