Fine line black outline of the state of Ohio with the word Home in red script beside it, and a partial black owl tattoo below, on a forearm.

Ohio outline with Home script on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A black fine line outline of the US state of Ohio sits across the skin, with the word Home in red cursive script at its north-eastern edge. A partial black linework owl with shaded wing detail appears lower down the limb. The composition is a close, straight-on photo against a dark background, with the outline and script as the main focus.

Fine line Forearm State outline Home Script Owl

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

Hettie Marsh had pegged the southern line of the township by Tuesday, but the lake shore would not sit still for her. Each dawn the water had taken another rod of sand, and the old field book said nothing about what to do when a border kept moving.

Keep reading

The owl lived in a hollow sycamore at the corner where the northern edge met the shore, and it hunted the marsh grass at dusk. Hettie began leaving it scraps of salt pork on the stump, and within a fortnight it would take them from her palm without a flinch. She took to talking to it while she sighted her compass, reading out the figures she could not say to the men at the depot.

In October the county sent a clerk with a ledger and orders to close the survey. He wanted the line straightened where the lake had bent it, and he wanted it by Friday. Hettie laid her pen across the drawing and refused him. She traced the wavering shore with a steady hand, marking every bite the water had taken, because a map that lied about the ground was worse than no map at all.

When the clerk had gone, she sat with the owl until the lamp burned low, then wrote one word in the margin where the north-eastern corner met the lake: home. The owl blinked, unimpressed, and drifted off over the reeds. The map went to the county office exactly as she drew it, crooked and honest, with a small curl of land where the word sat.