Black tattoo of five bird silhouettes in flight scattered across pale skin on the side of the torso, placed on the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Flock of bird silhouettes on the side

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Five solid black bird silhouettes in flight are scattered loosely across pale skin, with the largest at upper left and smaller birds spreading out to the right and below. The shapes are filled with flat black ink, with no shading or fine detail, and the spacing creates a sense of movement. The photo is taken close up and straight on, with a teal cushion visible at the lower edge.

Ribs Bird Flock Silhouette Flight

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 cook counted the birds again, the way her grandmother had taught her on the Tyne, and again there were five. Five was a poor number. It meant the big gulls had gone off to wherever gulls went when the weather turned, and only the strays were left to follow the galley smoke.

Keep reading

Tamsin had kept the galley of the collier Morrow Hen for eleven winters. She fed the crew salt beef and oatcake and never once threw a crust over the side, because a bird fed by a ship would remember the ship. So they came. They wheeled above the funnel and dropped onto the rail to quarrel over gristle, and when the wind swung round to the north-east they lifted all together, black against the grey, and went wherever the wind pointed.

The mate, Osric Pell, who had never eaten a meal without complaining of it, said the birds were bad luck and ought to be shot. Tamsin said birds were only birds. Then the Morrow Hen struck the Cromer shoals in a February fog, and the boats were lowered in the dark. It was the five strays that found them. They circled the lantern on the lifeboat's mast, wings going like pages of a book, until the men pulling at the oars could see where the water ended and the shore began.

After that Tamsin stopped counting. Every morning she set out five crusts on the sill, and every morning the galley smoke rose straight up, and the birds came down for them, and went up again.