Black and grey fine line tattoo of a bird in flight on the upper chest, built from overlapping circles, triangles and dotted lines.

Geometric bird in flight on upper chest

Geometric · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A bird with outstretched wings is shown in flight, drawn from overlapping circles, angular feather shapes and dotted guide points. The linework is fine and even in black ink, with no shading or colour. The bird is centred on the upper chest near the collarbone, and the photograph is taken close up on the skin.

Geometric Fine line Dotwork Chest Bird Wing Circle Triangle Geometric shape Dot

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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

Brother Anselm had drawn the same sparrow forty times before the abbot stopped asking to see it. Each attempt began the way the old manual taught: a point pressed into the vellum, a compass set to the width of a wing, one circle laid over the next until the bird showed itself through the rings like a face through steam. The dots were for the hand that would follow. Every joint and feather tip had to be marked first in the cold ink of plain intention, then joined by line.

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On the feast of Saint Cuthbert a carter came to the gate with a crate of pears and a dead bird wrapped in his coat. Its wings were splayed as if it had been caught mid-glide, and he wanted to know whether the brothers could make something of it before he buried it. Anselm carried it to the measuring room, pinned the tips of its wings with two brass points, and spent the afternoon finding the circles hidden inside it. The shoulder was a ring. The primaries fanned from a common centre. Every feather was a triangle that wanted to point the way the bird had been going.

He drew it that night, not as a memorial but as a correction. The lines came easily now. When he finished, the sheet looked more like a diagram of flight than a bird, and he understood, with the lamp guttering, that the drawing was the only part of the sparrow still climbing. He pinned the sheet above the door where the carter would see it on his way out, and left the last dots unjoined so that whoever came after could finish the flight for themselves.