Black and grey dotwork and geometric tattoo of a bird with spread wings on an arm, with overlapping circular arcs over its body.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird in flight with circular overlays on an arm

Dotwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A small songbird with wings spread wide is shown mid-flight, drawn in bold black outline with feather detail on the wings and tail. The body is built from overlapping concentric arcs and ellipses, with stippled dotwork shading across the chest and back. The bird is in black and grey ink on pale skin, centred on the frame against a dark background.

Dotwork Geometric Other Bird Wing Feather Tail Circle Arc

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 bird had been in the attic for three days before Mrs Hollis agreed to let Thomas Greave climb up after it with a dustpan and a tea towel. He lodged on the second floor of Marram House, a tall, narrow boarding house on Sallow Crescent, where the wind came off the shingle every evening and rattled the sash windows like a bailiff who had given up hoping for a reply. He had arrived for a fortnight in October and stayed eleven years, mostly because of the drawing board he kept under the eaves and the light that came through the skylight at six in the morning.

Keep reading

He found the bird wedged behind the cold water cistern, wings flung wide against the rafters as though it had tried to fly through the timber and been surprised. Thomas folded the tea towel around it and felt its heart going fast against his palm. He had spent thirty years drafting tide tables for the harbour board with a pair of brass dividers, and he knew that every ring he drew was a way of making the sea hold still for a moment. The bird's wings had that same look to him now, layered arcs stacked over one another like ripples that had decided to stop.

He carried it down the stairs and out into the back garden, where the slate was wet and the gulls were quarrelling over the bins. Mrs Hollis watched from the kitchen window with her arms folded. Thomas opened his hands. The bird sat there a long moment, then lifted off the slate and was gone over the wall, and for a second its shadow crossed the drawing board he had propped on the sill, a dark loop over the pencil lines.

Later, with the tea going cold at his elbow, he took up the dividers and drew one more circle, leaving a gap at the top just wide enough for wings. Mrs Hollis came up with a biscuit and asked what the bird had been. "Only a visitor," he said, and she set the plate down beside the page, looking at the open ring as if she could hear something still moving through it.