Black ink dotwork drawing of a bird skull beside a flowering branch and a feather, a tattoo design sheet with no body placement shown.

Bird skull, blossom branch and feather design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing of a bird skull on the left, with a flowering branch of leaves and blossoms curving up the centre and a long feather on the right. The skull and flowers are built from fine stippled dots and dense shading, while the leaves and feather use crisp fine lines with hatching. The image is a plain white background in black ink only, arranged as a standalone design.

Dotwork Botanical Skull Branch Leaves Blossom Flower Feather

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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

Dear Ruth, the skull is on the windowsill now, beside the jam jar of blackthorn, and I have stopped pretending it is an ornament. Mr Pryce from the farm brought it up in a feed sack on Tuesday, saying the rook had come down the chimney of the bothy and died in the grate. I cleaned it with a pin and a great deal of patience. The stippling along the brow is where the bone is pitted, not where I was careless.

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The branch is from the pear hedge behind the chapel. It came into blossom three weeks early, which Pryce says is what happens before a hard spring, and I have been waiting for the frost ever since. Each morning I check the petals the way you once checked my hairline for nits, and each morning they are still standing.

The feather came from the same sack. It is a primary, nearly a foot long, and the barbs on the outer vane have worn to a fringe, so it must have spent a long time in the wind before it fell. I laid all three on the oilcloth and drew them, and the drawing came out better than I deserve, though I would not show the committee. Dr Hale wants a list of specimens by June, and I have written him a list with nothing on it but the crow.

I think the old bird was trying to tell us something about the weather, or about ourselves. Come up when the hedges are green and tell me what you make of it. Bring the good ink.

Yours, Margaret