Solid black blackwork tattoo of a circular emblem with a stylised bird and wing shapes and a small star burst, shown on plain skin.

Circular bird emblem tattoo in solid black

Blackwork · Black and grey · Photo

A bold circular emblem made of solid black ink, with a stylised bird-like head and two curved wing shapes. Within the lower wing area sits a small star burst set into a feather-like form, with the negative skin showing through the cut-out shapes. The ink is flat and dense with a clean edge, shown in a close, straight-on crop against plain skin.

Blackwork Emblem Bird Wing Star Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had cut the stencil from an old tarpaulin, and the wing shapes came out lopsided because the knife kept slipping on the wet canvas. Dougal said it looked like a gull that had lost an argument. She told him to hold the lamp steady instead.

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They were painting it on the lock gate at Hobbs Cut before the sun was up, the water below black and sluggish, the bargemen's dogs barking across the towpath. The developers had sent men with clipboards on Tuesday, and by Wednesday somebody had drawn a line through every name on the notice board. The emblem was the signal that the lock-keepers would open their gates on the night the survey boats came, so that nothing would float through to the marina.

Her hand shook on the last feather. Dougal wanted to add a star, a little burst set into the cut-out where the paint would catch the torch. Nell said stars were for people who expected to be remembered, and then she drew it anyway, a spiked white point inside the dark plume, because the thing about a signal was that somebody had to be able to read it from the far bank.

At dawn the survey boat came round the bend, its engine a slow cough. Its pilot saw the black bird on the gate, the single bright star low down, and turned his boat around without being asked. Nell watched it go and noticed her paint was still tacky on her wrist, and she did not wipe it off.