Black and grey realistic hawk in flight, its wings breaking into ink splatter and fading into a city skyline, shown as a tattoo design on white.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hawk in flight with ink splash wings

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A realistic hawk or eagle is shown mid-flight in profile, facing left with its talons tucked below. Its feathers are rendered in fine black and grey shading, while the outer wing edges dissolve into splashes and drips of ink. A faint city skyline appears at the right wing tip against the plain white background.

Realism Eagle Bird Flight Ink splatter City skyline Feather Wing

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 hawk on the north wall has been losing its feathers since Lent, and Brother Anselm sends you up the ladder with a bucket of lime wash and a rag as if that will stop it. Up close the bird is more careful than any painting has a right to be. Every barb is drawn in grey, the talons tucked under its belly like a folded purse, and its eye fixes on something past the chapter house roof. The wings are the trouble. Past the last row of primaries they stop being feathers and become spatter, black drips running down the plaster in thin threads that pool in the cracks between the flags.

Keep reading

Anselm says the wall was limed over twice in his lifetime and the ink comes through regardless. He says a novice once tried to scrape it and woke the next morning with his own hand smudged grey to the wrist. You laugh, then stop, because the bird's wingtip is not where you left it. A little further right, the plaster has been painted over with a city: a row of towers, a crane, a church spire no bigger than your thumbnail. The hawk has been flying over it all along, and its shadow falls on the streets below.

On the last afternoon before the bishop's visitors arrive, you finish the lime wash on the high section and climb down with grey to your elbows. Anselm asks whether it has gone. You tell him it has only moved on. He nods as if you have answered the question he meant to ask, and says the rain will be in by vespers. Outside the gate, the road runs east towards the towers, and somewhere along it a hawk is working the wind over the rooftops, dragging its ink behind it.