Fine line black tattoo of a bird in flight formed from looping script words, on the side of the ribs.

Bird made of script on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A bird in flight is drawn in thin black linework, with its wings and body formed from looping script words that read as calligraphic lettering. A long tail curls down into a large open loop beneath the body. The ink is black on light skin, and the tattoo is shown against a plain torso with grey fabric above it.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Bird Script Word Swirl Wing Flourish

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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

The ink had thickened in the pot by the time the Lerwick boat came in, and I still had not finished the bird. I had been at it since the gale, copying the word volat across the top of a ledger page in my best hand and trying to make the tail of the t curl without snagging the line below. Alif sat at the front of the page, tall and upright, the way the Tangier sailor had shown me when he left his letter book in the schoolhouse and never came back for it.

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Tomas came in with rain on his collar and asked what the bird was for. I told him it was a word that meant he flies, something a monk had written over a sparrow so the line would keep it up in the air. He traced the big loop at the bottom with one wet finger. 'Then why does it go down?' I did not have an answer ready, so I gave him the pen. He pressed too hard, and a blot bloomed under the wing like a dropped feather.

We let it dry on the chapel wall, pinned at the corners with two tacks and a chip of slate. The boat sailed on the morning tide and the wind came round to the north, and by the time the cloud cleared the page had gone from the wall. Only a faint grey shape of the bird stayed behind on the whitewash, wings out and tail looping down, as if the damp had lifted it straight off the paper and it had flown.