Back view of a loose black brushstroke bird tattoo across the upper back, with sweeping red ink lines crossing the skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black brushstroke bird on upper back

Back · Mixed · Photo

A large, loose tattoo of a bird or wing made of black, feathered brush-like strokes covers the upper back and sweeps down towards the lower back. Thin grey shading and fine dark lines suggest movement, and several red ink lines cross the shoulder blades and run down the spine. The photograph is taken straight on from behind against a plain light background.

Back Bird Wing Brushstroke Abstract 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

The snow has sealed the pass since Tuesday, and you have stopped counting the guests at the long table, because the only one who matters is the raven on the sill. It came in with the drift, a shape of black brushstrokes pressed against the frosted glass, and it has not once looked away from you.

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Old Anselm says ravens bring news or carry it off, and that you should bolt the shutter. But you have watched it for two days, and it has never flapped so much as drawn itself, feathers lifting in sharp dark flicks like a hand finishing a line of ink. A red thread trails from its foot across the floorboards, out under the door and into the snow, where it catches the lamplight like a fresh cut.

On the third night you follow the thread. The drifts come to your knees, then your waist, and the red line runs ahead of you through the blue dark, taut as a fishing line, until it leads you up the slope to the chapel wall where the cold has frozen the bell rope mid-swing. The raven sits on the iron lip of the bell. It lowers its head toward the rope, and you see that the thread is wound through the clapper and tied off in a careful knot that someone made long ago.

You untie it with fingers that barely work. The bell does not ring. The raven lifts, a spill of black across the stars, and the thread falls slack in your hands, light as ash. Back at the inn the lamp still burns in the window, and Anselm stands at the door with his coat over his shoulders, saying your name as though it were the first time he had ever needed to say it.