Black and white flash sheet showing a owl on a branch, several bird silhouettes, and floral and dotted patterns filling the shapes.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Birds, owl and branches flash sheet

Black and grey · Flash

A flash sheet of black silhouetted birds, an owl perched on a branch, and scattered sprigs and flowers. Many of the bird shapes are filled with floral, dot and line patterns, while smaller birds and flourishes are left as solid black. The designs are arranged loosely across a white background in a single black ink colour.

Bird Owl Branch Flower Floral pattern Silhouette Swallow Leaves

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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

You open the stall at six, before the rain has made up its mind, and pin the sheet of paper birds to the canvas awning the way your aunt taught you: the big swallow first, wings swept back like a blade, then the owl on its branch, then everything else scattered in the gaps. Nobody buys at that hour. The gulls on the roof gutter argue about it. You lay out the stencils in rows, black on white, and you notice that the birds that sell are the ones with the patterned bellies, the dots and the little rings of flowers pressed inside their shapes, because people want to see what a thing is hiding before they agree to carry it.

Keep reading

A woman in a green mac stops at noon with a dripping umbrella and asks which one is the owl. You tell her the owl is the one who never sleeps, which is a lie you tell for business. She laughs and says she has been awake for three weeks herself, and you show her the branch that runs from the owl's feet down the sheet to the small solid birds, how the line never breaks even when the picture does. She chooses the one with the most flowers inside it, the bird that looks like it is made of a garden.

By four the rain has settled in and the market lamps are buzzing. You take down the sheet and fold it along the creases, and the black shapes stay sharp against the white even when the paper goes soft in your hand. Tomorrow you will set it out again in the same order, the swallow first, because that is the order it arrived in, and because somebody always comes back for the bird they did not quite see the first time.