Black and grey realism full sleeve tattoo on a woman's arm, showing flying birds, clouds and a forest, shown from two angles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Birds and forest full sleeve

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A full sleeve covering the upper arm and forearm, with large birds in flight near the shoulder and smaller birds lower down among dark tree silhouettes. Soft clouds and a pale, hazy light sit behind the trees and birds, while finer feather detail appears on the larger birds. The image shows the sleeve from two angles side by side, with the subject's face and head out of frame.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Bird Raven Crow Forest Tree Cloud Sky Feather

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

Oswin Teague had counted the crows over Hallam Wood every dawn for thirty-one years, and every dawn the number had been the same, nine, until the spring the count came out at ten. He wrote it in the ledger beside the gatehouse, under the column headed weather, because the estate steward wanted weather and nothing else.

Keep reading

The tenth bird was larger than the rest, its wings grey at the tips where the light caught them, and it did not join the others above the beeches. It flew low along the ride, cutting through the mist that lay in the bracken like spilt milk, and landed on the gatepost with a sound like a dropped coat. A ring of pale feathers sat at its throat, and it watched him the way the steward watched rent.

"You're late," Oswin said, which was foolish, because nobody had told him to expect anything. The bird opened its beak and said nothing. Instead it lifted off, circled the clearing twice, and dropped a thin strip of silver foil onto the step. Pressed into it with a nail were the words: the cloud breaks at noon. Oswin looked up. Above the pines the sky was dark as a slate roof, and then, slowly, the cloud split like a cut loaf and white light poured down the far slope.

He went in for his coat and did not come out again until the crows had gone quiet. When he did, the ledger lay open on the step where he had left it, and beside today's line someone had written in a sharp, unfamiliar hand: ten, and one to spare.