Neo-traditional tattoo of a black crow with green and pale leaves across a man's chest, shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black crow and leaves on chest and shoulder

Neo-trad · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A large black crow with detailed feather work spreads its wings across the chest and over the shoulder, its beak and tail reaching towards the edges of the frame. Pale and green leaves sit beneath the bird, with fine outlines and soft shading, while a yellow and dark swirling motif appears lower on the torso. The image is a close, angled photograph of the skin with black ink dominating and the colour used sparingly on the foliage and motif.

Neo-trad Japanese Chest Shoulder Upper arm Crow Raven Bird Leaves Foliage Feather Wing Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The crow came back on the first gale of October, as it had the year before, and I had already decided not to feed it. Mrs Tennant at the mainland shop said crows keep their grudges longer than people do, and I believed her, because the bird had taken the bacon rind off my sill in March and watched me while it ate.

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It sat on the lamp rail that morning with its wings half open, as if drying them, and sycamore leaves came in with it. Three of them, pale underneath, stuck to the wet black of its feathers. I had not seen a sycamore on this rock in nineteen years of keeping it. The nearest trees were up at Bamburgh, four miles of sea away, and the wind had been out of the west for a week.

I went down to the stores for the paraffin, and when I climbed back up the crow was gone. The leaves lay in a neat row across the brass of the lens housing, each one turned the same way, as though someone had laid them out for inspection. By mid-afternoon the wind had swung round to the north-east and the fog came off the water like wet wool. I lit the lamp an hour early.

Just after midnight a fishing coble came past the Hopes with its lantern swinging, and the skipper later told the harbour he had steered by my beam alone. The crow was on the rail when he hailed me, feathers fluffed, looking pleased with itself. I still leave the lamp-room window open a crack each October, and I still don't put out any bacon.