Black and grey drawing of an owl head with dense ornamental feather patterns and staring eyes, shown as a standalone design with no body placement.

Ornamental owl head design

Black and grey · Flash

A front-facing owl head with wide, staring eyes, a hooked beak and tufted ear feathers, set against a plain white background. The linework uses fine hatching, stippling and dense geometric patterning across the feathers, face and chest, giving the piece a highly detailed, ornamental finish. The image is entirely black ink on white, with no colour.

Owl Feather Eye Beak Ornamental pattern Geometric pattern

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

Right, sit down, the lot of you. The urn's only just boiled and Dennis has been eyeing the custard. I'm going to tell you about the owl that lived in the bell tower above Marlow Road Infants, because most of you were too busy throwing chalk to notice it, and it noticed you.

Keep reading

It wasn't a barn owl. Barn owls are plain, like a dishcloth that's seen better days. This one had feathers cut in rows, like the scalloped edge of a good pie crust, and every feather had its own little pattern of triangles and dots, as if somebody had gone over it with a compass and a great deal of patience. Mr Pilling, who taught woodwork and never once wore a jacket, swore he'd seen it perched on the window ledge with its ear tufts raised like horns. It kept its eyes open all night, round and black-rimmed, sharp enough to read the register by.

Every term it took one thing from the school. Not a child, don't look like that. A lost thing: a glove, a recorder, a wooden ruler with somebody's name carved along it. In return it left a single pale feather on the sill, and that feather was the only honest thing in the building. Put it under your pillow and you'd dream your sums right, though you'd wake unable to spell your own surname.

So I've been thinking, sitting here with my bad knee, about who the owl was keeping count of. Now, Dennis, the custard. And don't tell me you've still got my conker.