Realistic black and grey feather tattoo on a forearm, with the script words Not all who wander are lost running beneath it.

Feather and script quote on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded black and grey feather lies diagonally across the forearm, with fine barbs and soft grey gradients along its quill. Below it, a flowing black script reads Not all who wander are lost, ending in a thin trailing line that curls towards the feather tip. The skin is set against a pale pink fabric background, with the photo taken at a slight angle.

Realism Lettering Forearm Feather Quote Script Text

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

Sit nearer the stove, lad, and mind the cat, she's had a bad night. You'll want the story of the Silver Wren the way my grandfather told it, and he had it from a man who was on the boat.

Keep reading

Three days out past the Isle of May in the autumn of the great gale, the Wren lost her bearings. The glass had dropped like a stone and the fog came down so thick the crew could not see the bow from the wheel. Her skipper, a grim man called Angus Rennie, swore he knew where the Forth ran. He did not. For two days they drifted the grey water, chasing shoals that were not there, burning their last coal and hauling nets full of nothing but weed.

On the third morning a fulmar came out of the murk and circled the mast, slow and patient, then turned north. Rennie took it for a jest of the sea. The deckhand, a boy called Sandy Lyle, swore the bird was only hungry. They followed it anyway. Hours later the fog tore open like wet paper and there was the Bass Rock, white with birds, not a mile off the larboard rail.

Sandy kept one of the fulmar's grey feathers tucked in his cap band ever after. When he came ashore he would hold it up to the harbour lamp and say the words Rennie had muttered at the wheel, that not all who wander are lost. Nobody believed him until he showed them the feather. Now give me your cup.