Black linework tattoo of an origami crane with floral patterning and a bird with ornate wings on a shoulder, shown in two stacked photos.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Origami crane and bird on a shoulder

Neo-trad · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The top photo shows an origami-style crane with floral scrollwork filling its folds, beside a partly visible bird with ornate wings. The lower photo shows a close view of a stylised bird with layered, patterned wings and a decorative collar, with small ink dots scattered nearby. The work is in black linework with grey shading and sits on the upper back or shoulder.

Neo-trad Shoulder Bird Swallow Floral pattern Ornament Wing Dot

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

Snow had buried the lower road for three days when the carter came in stamping, and he set a folded square of paper on the bar as if it were a coin. "From the man on the bridge," he said. "He said the inn would know what to do with it."

Keep reading

Mistress Osgood turned it over in her floury hands. It was a crane, folded so tight the creases shone, and when she eased open one wing she found a bird inked on the underside, its wings laid out feather by feather like the lace on a christening shawl. Nobody in the parlour knew the man on the bridge. Nobody had seen a bird that fine since the old sign rotted off its hook.

Her daughter Ilse carried the paper upstairs to the room where the stranger had slept the winter before and laid it on the sill. That night the wind dropped. In the morning the crane was gone, and in its place sat a small grey swallow with a bead collar at its throat, and beside it, scattered across the frost like spilt pepper, a dozen dark dots that had not been there before.

The road opened on the fourth day. Ilse climbed to the sill every morning after that and found the bird in a different spot, always turned towards the way the snow had come. Mistress Osgood never said what she made of it. She only hung a new sign over the door, a crane with its wings spread, and left the window unlatched all winter.