Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a bird with spread wings and talons gripping a branch, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Diving bird on an upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large bird, likely a raven or crow, is shown in mid-flight with its wings spread wide and its head angled downward. The feathers and body are built up with fine stippled dots and shading, giving depth and texture, and the talons grip a branch or rock at the lower edge. The tattoo is rendered entirely in black and grey ink and fills most of the upper arm, with the wings extending towards the shoulder.

Dotwork Blackwork Upper arm Bird Raven Crow Wing Talon Branch 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

The raven came off the breakwater like a dropped coat, wings flung wide, head tipped toward the green water, and Nell kept her needle moving through the net because the fishermen had taught her not to look up when the birds were diving. Everyone in Skerrow Quay knew the raven. It had sat on the Mary Ann's mast through the autumn gales and took its wages in pilchards, and the old men said it could count the boats coming in.

Keep reading

Her father had stopped laughing at that years ago, after the Pell brothers went out on a calm morning and did not come back. Nell had been eleven. She remembered the tide table pinned by the door, and her mother tapping it each evening as if the numbers might change. Since then she had mended nets in the loft above the chandlery and counted the hours between the lighthouse beams, and she had never once given the raven a name.

Today it landed on the weed-slick rock below the slipway, folded its wings in one long shudder, and pinned a crab under one foot. It looked up at her with a bright eye that had nothing of the sea in it. Nell set down the net, took the last herring from her pail, and tossed it. The raven caught it without hurry and, bending its head, swallowed.

Beneath the tangle of its claws, where the crab had been, lay a tarnished brass ring, the kind her brother had worn on a cord around his neck. She had never told anyone he lost it on the Sorrow's deck, the morning before the fog. The raven lifted off, low over the water, and she watched it climb until it was only a mark against the lighthouse. Then she picked up the needle and, for the first time in years, she did not look at the sea.