Blue-grey sketch tattoo of a bird holding a leafy twig, perched on a tree stump with leafy branches, on a torso above jeans.

Bird on a branch tattoo on the stomach

Botanical · Other · Colour · Photo

A bird stands on a tree stump with a leafy twig in its beak, with more leaves sprouting from the stump on either side. The linework is loose and sketchy, with soft shading in a single blue-grey ink. The tattoo sits low on the torso, centred in the frame, with a woman's hand and white lace top above it and jeans below.

Botanical Other Bird Leaves Branch Twig

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

You are in the back kitchen of the Ashdown Arms at seven, a jam jar of rainwater in one hand and your grandfather's sable brush in the other. The bride wants the seating plan lettered on the slate by the door, and the only man in the village who still letters slate has been in bed since Tuesday with his chest. He rang you from the landing to tell you exactly what to do, which was not very much.

Keep reading

Indigo, a drop of ox gall, and no more water than you need. 'Blue-grey, not blue,' he said. 'Blue wants to shout. Grey lets things sit.' You stir until the ink looks like the sky over the church before rain, then carry the jar out to the yard, where the chestnut stump still sits in the corner because nobody has had the heart or the saw to shift it since the storm in February.

A wood pigeon is already on the stump when you sit down, a sprig of hawthorn in its beak, looking at you as if you owe it an answer. You draw the way he taught you: one line for the neck, a flick for the wing, the leaves left loose and quick. The bird does not move. It only tilts its head when the brush slips and a bead of ink runs toward the edge of the stump, and you let it run.

When you come back in, the bride is standing over the slate with her veil over one arm. She asks where the bird came from. You tell her it was already waiting, and that the ink will look paler once it dries, the way his always did. She says she likes it better that way. Outside, the stump is bare again, and the hawthorn lies across it where the pigeon left it.